Forums » Suggestions

Turrets

May 21, 2003 Eldrad link
The current frigate is fairly easy to take down because its turrets can't hit small fast moving targets that change direction alot (most obviously a fighter simply spin strafing). A lot of people have suggested making it harder to kill, by adding sheilds and such. I don't think this addresses the problem it just makes it take longer.
My suggestion is that when the ship recognizes a highly monuverable ship (that haven't been continually turboing for the past second) as its target the turrets try to work together to cover an area around the target with lasers, instead of actually hiting the point the target is currently headed for. No small fighter could live very long if they were getting hit every couple of seconds by just one of those shots.
A way this might be accomplished is to define a sphere centered on the point the target is expected to be. Then devide the sphere into the number of turrets that can shoot into it, and have each of the turrets fire 'randomly' into their area.
This way of doing it has a few problems, and there is probably a much better algorithm, but the turrets have enough fire power to attack a larger area instead of trying to hit fighters directly.
May 21, 2003 Suicidal Lemming link
Well, turrets are found in groups mostly, haveing all turrets having really good aim is bad, here comes my idea, it may not be sane.
The engine area has 3 turrets, the tip has 3, the middle (inbvetween dorsal fin and tip), has 2, the tip of the dorsal fin has 1 or 2, not sure.
I say increase the ability to aim of some of them, we don't want 21 turrerts to have perfect aim do we?
Besides, it takes about 12 hits to take down a valk with a turret.
What i find a problem is you can nestle between a side fin and the frigate and blast away, the bots can't get you because they can't find you, the turrets can't get you because they are unable to fire there.
May 21, 2003 Celebrim link
This is to me a symptom of a larger problem with imperfect aiming code. I would imagine that the turrets are using a peice of code to aim with that is similar to the auto-aim code used by the player ship's. This code works pretty good for ships that are translating in only one direction, but works poorly for ships that are accellerating or translating in two directions and not at all for ships translating in all three directions (barrel rolling). Using autoaim, the player's shots are mis-corrected resulting in aimed shots virtually always missing. You are almost better off turning off auto-aim versus a ship in a continious barrel roll because shots that would otherwise hit are diverted by the auto-aim to a location that misses.

I don't know how much of that is intentional, but some improvement in automatic aiming behavior all around is probably needed. Maybe not enough to make hitting a barrel rolling target easy, but enough to make 'dumb' manuevering (simply holding down two keys continiously and making no random changes in course or otherwise trying to dodge) or 'blind' evasion (engaging in some manuever continiously without regard to the placement of the incoming fire) less effective in avoiding incoming fire.

If the evasion is occuring in a regular pattern, then well aimed shots ought to hit.
May 21, 2003 UncleDave link
Perhaps an energy field surrounding the frigate with a range of 300m and the effect of a lightning mine...?
May 21, 2003 slappyknappy link
I had thought of this "charged hull" idea for regular ships, but quickly abandoned it as an "uber-weapon"... it would look cool though.
May 21, 2003 Suicidal Lemming link
How about this, only flag ship class ships can fly close to another flag ship class ship with out getting hurt?

The frigate will constantly emite large loads of radiation (i mean common, i can fit 2 proms, at least, in one engine slot on the frig, and it has 3 of them!), it will deal 1 dmg ever .01 seconds, so 100 dmg a second, any energy blast near the frigate (energy based) will act as a leap frog for the radiation, and blast you with the shots force and 1 seconds worth of radiation. Also maybe if your in the radiation too long, the radiation will stick to your ship for awhile and slowly disapate.
May 22, 2003 UncleDave link
Yeah, I can see the prommie pilots quivering... MORE POWER
May 22, 2003 F*SH link
Well there sould certainly be engine wash .. to stop fights from simply trailing the frigate that can't turn around...

I'm all in favour of a simple turret system. Even if it didn't pose a huge threat to incoming figters, it certainly makes their job a little harder..

There should also be tis system for smaller sips with low maneuvability (the centuar), as trhese ships are too easy to take down, because forward-mounted weaponry helps very little if you can't turn fast...

Would the turrets be individually targetable? Would they destroy incoming missiles (if they could it them. Make the turret weapon rapid-firing, like the gatling laser)