Shape is saying this, Have fun, make it fun for others, stop making it frustrating just for the sake of winning because that can only hurt VO.

Seconded

Well, that and I want the devs to make fights typically take 20 seconds or less

With a decisive outcome? That's crazy talk, that is.

All my fights last 20 seconds or less.Of course,I never really got the hang of that dodging thing you talk about..

Tosh: Well, drop all hullpoints by 1/2's, Double blaster damage to be commensurate with flares (basically normalize the two proportional to typical hit rates. Flares become more of a support weapon, area of effect, good for fighting larger groups, and for stunning your opponents, but less effective in a 1v1). Make reverse and side strafing power = 2/3 current values.

I think the fights will be very quick.

*Drop all hullpoints by 1/2
*Double blaster damage to be commensurate with flares
*Make reverse and side strafing power = 2/3 current values

Shape, I understand you're a respected pilot and commenter, but taken together those add up to a truly dumb idea. Let me take it a (very small) step further:

*Tie each ship to one of two posts, not more than 100m apart, facing eachother, and prevent them from moving around.

We could rename the game "MO" -- Mensur Online.

I don't think that's true at all,

Lets look at Counterstrike, for example, you can't move backward (or strafe? not sure about this one) as quickly as you can move forward.

Essentially, imo, allowing people to maintain distance control is the equivalent of allowing/encouraging camping.

The changes ensure that the battle is more like a fencing match, players jockey for a shot, each with the capacity to lunge forward, but with diminished ability to back up. Whomever decisively gets the upper hand, even once, wins the fight.

This also makes it so that in a multi battle, it's possible to quickly take out multiples, so that one can focus on the remainder (So that one can bring the strategies of say, Musashi, into play). But this comes at the cost of a much greater vulnerability to opponents in those multi fights.

As far as flares. In most games, area of effect weapons are relegated to a support capacity. Because an area of effect weapon has the capacity to deal far more than an energy weapon (fire a flare into a group of 4 people, how much damage does it do per second?)

You must not fence much: distance control and the timing thereof is one of the most important things. Many of my opponents, who found themselves stretching for that last half inch of distance to try and a least salvage a double touch out of their getting impaled on my epee, would say it is the most important thing :P

First, I don't like the idea of making all fights last only 20 seconds. I don't have a problem with people that pick 20 second loadouts. Like a quad rail. It is going to be a short fight, one way or the other. That is fine, because at least one party opted in for a short fight.

Sometime I recommend to newbs that they get a good light fighter, like a vult3, and just put one light gun on it, like a positron or n3, so they can intentionally have a long drawn out fight, and practice their dodging. In this case, longer fight equals more practice, so just about anything the newb can due to increase his survivability while still getting in close and getting real practice and experience is a good thing. Sometimes long fights are fun too, if that is what you are signing up for. An up close knife fight can be very exciting, and a rubber knife lets you practice that jab over and over. I recall some player going into battle with gov issue blasters and hive ions. A great way to train a newb.

I agree with reducing reverse speed. But when it comes to reducing side strafe, at what point should we instead just increase weapon velocities?

In many ways vo already has many things right. So much so that we are now debating refinements. One of those things is versatility. I like that someone can bring out the quadrail and opt for the all or nothing approach. But I also like that someone else can match it with an all energy fighter. You can agree on loadouts, or agree to disagree. Short fights might be a great idea for a pro like you that has his practice and now just wants the 20 seconds of glory, but the next guy may want other options. Let us try to keep the good parts, while we strip away just the few minor problems.

shape you seem to be advocating that this game return to space quake with all these fps references. lets remeber this is an rpg a space flight sim rpg at that. religating people to 20 seconds of fighting is sure one hell of a way to take all the skill out of it and add more dumb luck to the game

Lecter: It's true, I haven't fenced in a long time (not since highschool when we had this crazy Russian ex-olympian teaching us to keep our eyes up and on his mask as he wielded a foil with the safety tip broken off), but while there is an element of distance control, it's not like distance control in VO, yes you can back up to control distance, but you can't do it indefinitely, and certainly not if they charge at you (Read: Those freaky Saber guys, with their freaky shouts)

That's all I'm advocating for this, distance control is still important, but you can't hold a distance indefinitely.

Roda: Re: Weapon Velocities, the devs have already stated that increasing velocities increases lag. It's why we don't have high speed weapons. However, we can create the same effect by reducing strafing power.

Essentially, reducing side-strafe power is equivalent to increasing velocities across the board.

peytros: Having shorter fights actually IMPROVES the RP element. The only reason to have a 5 minute fight is if you're obsessed with a very long period of maneuvering. a 5 minute->20 minute fight makes it impossible to fight over an objective, it's simply going to take too long, by the time you're done fighting the convoy etc... is going to be long gone.

I personally DON'T think it'll take the skill out of it, and with 2 very talented fighters, I think you could still have a long fight, as neither one opens themselves up to a shot. But it would be harder, much harder than it is now.

EDIT: I'm in favor of an MMORPG with a strong emphasis on FPS-style combat. If we're going to neglect the lessons learned from other FPS-style games, we might as well just go the EVE route and take the first person shooter element out altogether.

Just for the sake of clarity, do you mean side-strafing thrust, end velocity, or both?

Edit: I second the emphasis on twitch combat in VO; taking that out cannot easily be decoupled from taking out FPS-style combat elements (and that's a good thing, in my opinion).

toshiro: I imagine it would have to be reverse and side-strafing thrust, I think reducing the velocity would have strange unintended consequences (Like slowing down when you switch to physics mode and turn)

So if you try to back up, it takes longer to reach maximum speed, and if you try to strafe and back up a lot you'll be moving, in general, slower backward than someone strafing and moving forward.

EDIT: On further thought, you could create a lot of interesting ship variants which were optimized for certain directions. For example, the vulture could be optimized for strafe up and strafe down power. The valk could be an all-arounder. The revenant might optimize for left-right strafing ability.

The raptor could actually be designed (with those interesting engines of its) to have a lot of reverse strafing power.

So these steps could result in a much greater emphasis on orientation of your ship, thus making rotation important outside of simply a barrel roll.

I wasn't upset, nor do I dislike you Shape, despite the tone of my writing.

I think that these ideas are too plain however. There are other ways to solve the issue of strafing and backpedaling as well as damage differences. If you are trying to address the fact that only a handful of ship setups are on the top of the proverbial food chain, then altering the weapons or the mechanics alone won't fix much. What you need are more mechanics which lead to specialized roles in team combat.

Why is it that ALL ships are damage focused? VO lacks tools. Why not add equipment that slow down opponents, or traps them. Or add guns which sap a ship's energy. How about a module that disables a target's turbo? Group combat shouldn't just be all guns and no tricks.

Those kinds of additions help VO break out of its Space Quake shell. Discussion about skill is absolutely worthless. If a game has depth, then skill will naturally affect how you play it.

And what handful of ships do you consider to dominate the food chain? In light fighters I see vult3, sercovult, corvult, rev-c, ibg, valk. And I also see great variety employed in the medium ship class. It is only in the heavy ship class that you begin to see more limited selection in dominate class ships. You would be hard pressed to pick a class that I could not pilot to the effect of defeating you, despite what you may choose to pilot. Atlas3? rev3? Taur3? Pick your poison, but put your blaster where your mouth is.

I am not opposed to weapons that do more or other than damage, but don't slam the variety we have now. Rails, rockets, blasters, missiles and mines. A well balanced combat group is a strong combat group.

You want other options? Suggest some in detail, each in it's own thread, and stop nay saying everything else you see.

If the game didn't require skill, then there might be no explaining how I dominate grey space, or the tani get crushed in deneb, or that you are scared to face anyone ingame, and restrict yourself to trolling the forums. Quake was not for everyone. This game is not for everyone. Some people just can't or won't develop the skill. Accept who you are and move on. This game will never be everything to all people, and we need to focus on what it already is, and how close it is to being what many people want it to be.

In light fighters I see vult3, sercovult, corvult, rev-c, ibg, valk

Do you realize that the corvus vulture is better than the other two vultures you list? And likewise the IBG is better than the Rev-C. That's what I meant by "top of the food chain". Since this game doesn't record all combat, there's no way to statistically show which of these ships is best, but spouting out that they're all equally effective is ridiculous.

If the game didn't require skill, then there might be no explaining how I dominate grey space

Check out this space cowboy lol

we need to focus on what it already is, and how close it is to being what many people want it to be.

Already devoid of content and variety is more like it.

All talk, no blaster. Pick a ship, show up in B-8.

With due respect to the subject of this thread and its posters, my comment is merely that for myself, I enjoy the variety of combat that the various ship setup and strategies offer. Certainly I agree that a good up close and personal fight is great fun, however I also enjoy the jousting combat required when I face off against an gt/flare taur, or a tri-flare maurader. Much as I enjoy a player (for lack of a recent example) like Solution who could use weapons like lmines in 1v1 combat with reasonable success.

I've kept quite in most of these combat threads because at my best, I'll likely only ever amount to a mediocre combat pilot. I do have some concerns however about what seems to me to be a drive to create a one size fits all combat model. Certainly back rolling and swarm and run strategies tend to ruin the fun of combat. As does futilely chasing the players that play in that manner.

Edit: That said, I think the ideas of adding strafe variety to the ship types as well as restricting the reverse and strafe accelerations are worth serious discussion. Also, the idea that you can accelerate in each direction at the same rate is cartoonish. My only disclaimer is that for heavier ships- particularly trade ships you periodically need the additional reverse thrust to aid with breaking.

Impavid, the difference is in the spirit and attitude conveyed in Shape's post vs yours.

I liked what Impavid said as well. Of course, I'm biased 'cause I was once in his harem for a short time. (Long story tho)

I agree essentially. If I HAD to win fights, I would employ as much backrolling, waiting, and cheating as the game would allow. I mean, if I truly wanted to sit and wait for all the flare-users to use up their flares, it would be a trivially easy thing to do, but I'm sure with the current crop of players they would run as soon as they ran out of 'em.

However, my main goal in VO is to have fun, and the most fun (for me at least) is fighting 1v1 in light fighters with energy weapons. Not even plasmadev duels in the (original-style) behemoths were more fun than the fights I used to have (and sometimes still do have) when it's just me, my opponent, and our reflexes/skills/tactics/luck.

Setting up your next snap-shot, or feinting to get your opponent to move as you want him to, or trying out a new maneuver to gain a firing solution is immensely fun, and to be honest it's the only reason I play VO. It's certainly not for the deep content or the crafting or the economy or any of the other things that are being developed but are frankly light years behind other games (granted, other games with 100 employees, but I digress...).

I play VO for the FPS. The shooty-shooty. The pewpew. The player-run RP stuff is fun as well, but that stuff is few and far between.

That being said, Shape's suggestion would at least be realistic. Most real-world 1v1 fights are over in under a minute, they are violent outbursts where the aggressor has an enormous advantage and surprise is a virtual guarantee of winning. I'm not sure how fun they are, though - surely not much for the loser.