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capship control
toshiro: Sorry, try googling 'SFC' and 'Star Trek'. Or just try 'Starfleet Command'.
Under my description, if the captain wants to concentrate his fire, he can order a turret (or all turrets) to 'fire at my target'. The main reason that you wouldn't want to do that in most cases is that if a turret is ordered to 'fire at my target' and the target is out of that turret's firing arc, its waits idle for the target to come into view, which is definately a bad thing if you are being attacked by more than one fighter. A typical way to handle your guns would to make all the turrets with heavy weapons or long range weapons 'fire at my target', and all the turrets with fast cycling light weapons 'fire at will' with a selection preference for (nearer) smaller targets. That way, you'd just select the threat you wanted to concentrate on, and let the remaining turrets do thier own thing about the fighters.
It's also possible to make the turret AI a little bit smarter in its target selection, for instance by weighting such things as speed and apparant motion as well as range when rating which target to fire one, and still basically operate within the parameters I described.
It wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing to separate the task of 'Helmsman' (flying the ship), from the task of Captain - configuring the shields, setting permissions on the turrets, toggling on and off the electronic warfare gizmos, etc. But I can't imagine needing to break it down any further than that. In a game like X-Wing or Descent Freespace, you already are expected to configure shields, target foes, select weapons, handle the electronic warfare gizmos, manage your energy, issues orders to your wingman, and fly the ship at the same time. This is not really that much more complicated.
Under my description, if the captain wants to concentrate his fire, he can order a turret (or all turrets) to 'fire at my target'. The main reason that you wouldn't want to do that in most cases is that if a turret is ordered to 'fire at my target' and the target is out of that turret's firing arc, its waits idle for the target to come into view, which is definately a bad thing if you are being attacked by more than one fighter. A typical way to handle your guns would to make all the turrets with heavy weapons or long range weapons 'fire at my target', and all the turrets with fast cycling light weapons 'fire at will' with a selection preference for (nearer) smaller targets. That way, you'd just select the threat you wanted to concentrate on, and let the remaining turrets do thier own thing about the fighters.
It's also possible to make the turret AI a little bit smarter in its target selection, for instance by weighting such things as speed and apparant motion as well as range when rating which target to fire one, and still basically operate within the parameters I described.
It wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing to separate the task of 'Helmsman' (flying the ship), from the task of Captain - configuring the shields, setting permissions on the turrets, toggling on and off the electronic warfare gizmos, etc. But I can't imagine needing to break it down any further than that. In a game like X-Wing or Descent Freespace, you already are expected to configure shields, target foes, select weapons, handle the electronic warfare gizmos, manage your energy, issues orders to your wingman, and fly the ship at the same time. This is not really that much more complicated.
ok, i can see that. maybe 2 people per ship. nothing more to add here :)
but about the firing arcs:
that is why i propose "sections" or batteries. you would want a variety of turrets at every location, as they are all about equally important to protect (i didn't add top deck and keel sections because capships need a weak point >:D).
with the abatteries, you could recoordinate every single turret's firing vector very quickly and then dismiss it again immediately. i guess i'm bickering about a detail now that will not make it into the game with a probability of 80%, but i thought it important. other than that, your turret AI idea is feasible and quite well thought-out. and again: i am against manning the turrets in capital ships (for the reason you mentioned, manpower). in a bomber or something like that it might be fun to have someone take over the turret (SW iv: a new hope, anyone?) but have it be ai controlled if necessary.
but about the firing arcs:
that is why i propose "sections" or batteries. you would want a variety of turrets at every location, as they are all about equally important to protect (i didn't add top deck and keel sections because capships need a weak point >:D).
with the abatteries, you could recoordinate every single turret's firing vector very quickly and then dismiss it again immediately. i guess i'm bickering about a detail now that will not make it into the game with a probability of 80%, but i thought it important. other than that, your turret AI idea is feasible and quite well thought-out. and again: i am against manning the turrets in capital ships (for the reason you mentioned, manpower). in a bomber or something like that it might be fun to have someone take over the turret (SW iv: a new hope, anyone?) but have it be ai controlled if necessary.
there has been a multitude of posts dealing with this topic and the things it entails.
when the idea of a taxi service was brought up, the valid point was made that it'd be boring for the passengers.
same thing with capital ship crews. they hang around until a fight, and then they "die".
controlling a capital ship would either take a huge number of crewmen (turrets, engines, missiles, tactics, navigation) or a prohibitively well designed ai to aid the captain.
i have thought of a compromise. let us say, capital ships have a number of "docks". special docks. one for the navigator, one for the gunnery control and so on. if a dock is filled, no one else can enter it, it becomes an exit dock.
you can only enter it if the owner of the ship is inside the ship and has given you the specific clearance.
upon entering the ship, you receive an interface radically different from the ones you know (station and ship), it being dedicated solely to the purpose you're supposed to serve.
you can exit the ship at any time (if it's about to blow up for example) in the ship you enterd with.
now for the AIs helping you.
as the "chores" are distributed, the amount of computing to be done should be distributed as well.
e.g. the navigator enters, he gets a load screen (the different ai might need that) and then his computer no longer cares about hull, cargo or bounties.
same thing with gunnery, cargo, tacticals and whatnot.
if this has been suggested, feel free to tell me, but also tell me what you think of my idea, please.
i might post a rephrased version of this, since i pretty much wrote this as it came to my mind.
when the idea of a taxi service was brought up, the valid point was made that it'd be boring for the passengers.
same thing with capital ship crews. they hang around until a fight, and then they "die".
controlling a capital ship would either take a huge number of crewmen (turrets, engines, missiles, tactics, navigation) or a prohibitively well designed ai to aid the captain.
i have thought of a compromise. let us say, capital ships have a number of "docks". special docks. one for the navigator, one for the gunnery control and so on. if a dock is filled, no one else can enter it, it becomes an exit dock.
you can only enter it if the owner of the ship is inside the ship and has given you the specific clearance.
upon entering the ship, you receive an interface radically different from the ones you know (station and ship), it being dedicated solely to the purpose you're supposed to serve.
you can exit the ship at any time (if it's about to blow up for example) in the ship you enterd with.
now for the AIs helping you.
as the "chores" are distributed, the amount of computing to be done should be distributed as well.
e.g. the navigator enters, he gets a load screen (the different ai might need that) and then his computer no longer cares about hull, cargo or bounties.
same thing with gunnery, cargo, tacticals and whatnot.
if this has been suggested, feel free to tell me, but also tell me what you think of my idea, please.
i might post a rephrased version of this, since i pretty much wrote this as it came to my mind.
I know this would work really.. really messily, but I just had to suggest it in case it could be refined.
I think back to the days when apple decided to make a little (iBook?) robot, with camera and all. This robot was controlled, live, from a website. The website took in what buttons everyone pushed, and, the highest total was the resulting movement.
Thus, piloting a ship, could be a group effort, its like getting an opinion on what should happen next. If more than half the people on the ship want to turn left... left it is!... Or if people decide to let one or a small group decide movement and just ride along, do nothing, and you dont vote for a direction. Also lay in protection that if someone or a group of someone' trys to mess things up by setting something on a direction key and leaving so the ship will fly in circles, they get dropped out of the control group after.. 10 seconds? 20? of holding the same key?
You could then, as an afterthought, leave gunners out of the pool of flying the ship, giving them control only of their turret. That way you don't have 25 people trying to shoot at different ships with the same gun...
I think back to the days when apple decided to make a little (iBook?) robot, with camera and all. This robot was controlled, live, from a website. The website took in what buttons everyone pushed, and, the highest total was the resulting movement.
Thus, piloting a ship, could be a group effort, its like getting an opinion on what should happen next. If more than half the people on the ship want to turn left... left it is!... Or if people decide to let one or a small group decide movement and just ride along, do nothing, and you dont vote for a direction. Also lay in protection that if someone or a group of someone' trys to mess things up by setting something on a direction key and leaving so the ship will fly in circles, they get dropped out of the control group after.. 10 seconds? 20? of holding the same key?
You could then, as an afterthought, leave gunners out of the pool of flying the ship, giving them control only of their turret. That way you don't have 25 people trying to shoot at different ships with the same gun...
What I'm thinking is that the Owner of the ship(captian) takes care of the capital ship class weapons and the navigating, while there are several gunners. YOur system would give the players on your ship too much control, the captain should have total control over his/her ship, if only for the reason he/she is the captain.
The captain should also have an option to boot players from his/her ship(like a docked person ro a gunner) and an AI would take over any lots that are empty.
The captain could alos "buy" AI's for his ship, a basic frigate may come with a cheesy AI for the turrets for free, but you can upgrade your AI until it becomes almost as good as a skilled player who spends weeks practicing on the turrets of a capital ship, but the AI wouldn't come cheap, and the strnger AI you get, the less turrets it can control at one time. Just some random thoughts...
The captain should also have an option to boot players from his/her ship(like a docked person ro a gunner) and an AI would take over any lots that are empty.
The captain could alos "buy" AI's for his ship, a basic frigate may come with a cheesy AI for the turrets for free, but you can upgrade your AI until it becomes almost as good as a skilled player who spends weeks practicing on the turrets of a capital ship, but the AI wouldn't come cheap, and the strnger AI you get, the less turrets it can control at one time. Just some random thoughts...
hm. i disagree with smurfy. you can't have a warship commandeered by a democracy.
about the "dismissing" option: that would be cool, no doubt.
i see it differently than you do, though.
i don't want many, many people on one cap ship, i want as few as possible (the more there are, the faster they get bored).
i see it like that: the gunner has some sort of threat indicator that shows him where the nearest attacker is, whether someone is firing at the ship with energy weapons and stuff like that. bigger ships would need more of those people, but i'd limit it to 4 per ship (bow, port, starboard and aft). turrets would be assigned to those people.
then we have the tactician. he has the overview about any forces in the sector and their positions relative to the ship. he also has control over the capital ship weaponry (torpedoes, huge wave motion cannons, it's been talked about).
he should be able to communicate with the onboard fighters (if there are any) via a secured channel (chatroom) so that he can keep control of them as effectively as possible.
last, but by far not least, we have the navigator/captain. he communicates the most with the outer world. of course the people involved with gunnery and tactics can chat, but in a fight their attentive potential is bound to be consumed by the matters at hand.
he will keep up communications, send distress calls, and steer the ship to safety or into the brogue.
also, he alone can make the ultimate decisions (abandon ship, disband/dismiss, recruit and so on).
about the "dismissing" option: that would be cool, no doubt.
i see it differently than you do, though.
i don't want many, many people on one cap ship, i want as few as possible (the more there are, the faster they get bored).
i see it like that: the gunner has some sort of threat indicator that shows him where the nearest attacker is, whether someone is firing at the ship with energy weapons and stuff like that. bigger ships would need more of those people, but i'd limit it to 4 per ship (bow, port, starboard and aft). turrets would be assigned to those people.
then we have the tactician. he has the overview about any forces in the sector and their positions relative to the ship. he also has control over the capital ship weaponry (torpedoes, huge wave motion cannons, it's been talked about).
he should be able to communicate with the onboard fighters (if there are any) via a secured channel (chatroom) so that he can keep control of them as effectively as possible.
last, but by far not least, we have the navigator/captain. he communicates the most with the outer world. of course the people involved with gunnery and tactics can chat, but in a fight their attentive potential is bound to be consumed by the matters at hand.
he will keep up communications, send distress calls, and steer the ship to safety or into the brogue.
also, he alone can make the ultimate decisions (abandon ship, disband/dismiss, recruit and so on).
If you are not familiar with SFC (in any of its three incarnations), you should be able to pick up SFC I or SFC II rather cheaply if you want to see how a you actually can control the full range of capital ship utilities with an arcadish interface.
Not that I'm suggesting that we should have as 'busy' or as arcadish of an interface as SFC, but I just wanted to show you that it is possible to run navigation, damage control, fire control, energy allocation, communications, shield allocation, sensors and so forth from the same interface. What you can't do is run all that and have time to plot actual detailed strategy - which is where SFC lost me, since it was supposed to be a strategy game and not an arcade game (or at least that was my take). Still, it probably was the most successful Star Trek game (not that that is saying much), so not all was lost.
If you have ever played any naval simulations like Silent Service or Destroyer Command, you are probably familiar with the idea of 'crew stations'. Basically, during the game you have the option of moving between different parts of the ship and crewing particular weapons. In my opinion this doesn't work particularly well. For one thing, in the case of any surface ship, there is always more than one weapon that needs crewing at a time. For another, it makes for a very busy interface in which the chief skill is being able to navigate the game environment quickly rather than outthinking the foe (whether computer or player. Besides which, it would I think create an unnecessary burden on the devs to have to create all theses separate graphics for each of the crew stations. Its better I think to put the captain in the role of the helmsman, and let the AI handle all the rest. After, that is more or less what Captain's do - issue orders on the handling of the ship. The leave everything else to thier subordinates - for example the first officer is in charge of damage control.
In the case of the game, I think that with every regard except handling the ship and communications, its quite possible to program simple rule based AI that suffices quite well. AI has relatively little problem aiming weapons. The rest of the tasks can be handled rather easily - for instance shield and energy allocation are parts of most fighter sims already.
You might want to read the thread on turrets that I wrote recently. It talks about both allowing 'passengers' and some simple rules for governing AI. Those rules aren't perfect, but they should suffice for anything but attempts to abuse the AI (and a good captain should be able to catch this and take over briefly enough to solve the problem). For myself, I think that AI controlled turrets are more important than player controlled turrets because you can't always count on trust worthy players being around when you need them, and that only being a turret gunner isn't the most exciting thing to most players. Also, IMO, player controlled turrets are more complex than AI controlled ones, because that means control of the ship is distributed across a network.
HPT: "The captain could also "buy" AI's for his ship, a basic frigate may come with a cheesy AI for the turrets for free, but you can upgrade your AI until it becomes almost as good as a skilled player who spends weeks practicing on the turrets of a capital ship, but the AI wouldn't come cheap, and the strnger AI you get, the less turrets it can control at one time."
Sounds like my idea of 'fire control' from the turret thread. In my mind, I don't imagine 'fire control' to so much effect the accuracy of the weapon as I imagine it to effect the speed with which the turret tracks a target. The better the fire control, the faster the turret tracks, and just like having a more agile ship, the more likely it is that the turret will hit its target.
If you were a gunner in a turret with low quality fire control, you'd notice that the crosshairs moved around rather sluggishly, much like being in a low agility ship. Whereas, if you had a high quality fire control, it would be much more like the point and click feel you have in a Valk, Vulture, or other agile ship.
I also talked about 'computers' which limited how much 'fire control' you could have. Imagine for instance you have a corvette with 4 turrets and one computer slot, and the best fire control is rated a '3'. The if the owner wanted all four turrets with type 3 fire control, he'd need to buy a computer rated at least a 12. Suppose an '18' is the best computer on the market. Well, the owner of the 4 turret ship can upgrade to the best computer he really needs comparitively cheaply compared to someone with a 6 turret ship and only one computer slot. Now suppose someone has a ship with 20 turrets and just two computer slots. The best computer rating he can have is a 36(18x2) which is only good enough to make at most 16 of the 20 turrets have class 2 fire control, and the rest have lowly class 1 fire control. The result is that the first ship, though it has fewer guns, is probably better on the whole vs. small zippy fighters, where as the big ship has to make up for its inaccuracy with shear volumn of fire and is probably better off concentrating on relatively unagile targets (like other big ships). To me this creates an ideal situation, in which everything has a weak spot which something else can cover for, but despite this everyone is still able to configure thier ship according to thier particular style.
In my opinion, noone can aim more than one turret at a time, so if you have a multi-turret ship, then you have to have at least some of the work split up.
Not that I'm suggesting that we should have as 'busy' or as arcadish of an interface as SFC, but I just wanted to show you that it is possible to run navigation, damage control, fire control, energy allocation, communications, shield allocation, sensors and so forth from the same interface. What you can't do is run all that and have time to plot actual detailed strategy - which is where SFC lost me, since it was supposed to be a strategy game and not an arcade game (or at least that was my take). Still, it probably was the most successful Star Trek game (not that that is saying much), so not all was lost.
If you have ever played any naval simulations like Silent Service or Destroyer Command, you are probably familiar with the idea of 'crew stations'. Basically, during the game you have the option of moving between different parts of the ship and crewing particular weapons. In my opinion this doesn't work particularly well. For one thing, in the case of any surface ship, there is always more than one weapon that needs crewing at a time. For another, it makes for a very busy interface in which the chief skill is being able to navigate the game environment quickly rather than outthinking the foe (whether computer or player. Besides which, it would I think create an unnecessary burden on the devs to have to create all theses separate graphics for each of the crew stations. Its better I think to put the captain in the role of the helmsman, and let the AI handle all the rest. After, that is more or less what Captain's do - issue orders on the handling of the ship. The leave everything else to thier subordinates - for example the first officer is in charge of damage control.
In the case of the game, I think that with every regard except handling the ship and communications, its quite possible to program simple rule based AI that suffices quite well. AI has relatively little problem aiming weapons. The rest of the tasks can be handled rather easily - for instance shield and energy allocation are parts of most fighter sims already.
You might want to read the thread on turrets that I wrote recently. It talks about both allowing 'passengers' and some simple rules for governing AI. Those rules aren't perfect, but they should suffice for anything but attempts to abuse the AI (and a good captain should be able to catch this and take over briefly enough to solve the problem). For myself, I think that AI controlled turrets are more important than player controlled turrets because you can't always count on trust worthy players being around when you need them, and that only being a turret gunner isn't the most exciting thing to most players. Also, IMO, player controlled turrets are more complex than AI controlled ones, because that means control of the ship is distributed across a network.
HPT: "The captain could also "buy" AI's for his ship, a basic frigate may come with a cheesy AI for the turrets for free, but you can upgrade your AI until it becomes almost as good as a skilled player who spends weeks practicing on the turrets of a capital ship, but the AI wouldn't come cheap, and the strnger AI you get, the less turrets it can control at one time."
Sounds like my idea of 'fire control' from the turret thread. In my mind, I don't imagine 'fire control' to so much effect the accuracy of the weapon as I imagine it to effect the speed with which the turret tracks a target. The better the fire control, the faster the turret tracks, and just like having a more agile ship, the more likely it is that the turret will hit its target.
If you were a gunner in a turret with low quality fire control, you'd notice that the crosshairs moved around rather sluggishly, much like being in a low agility ship. Whereas, if you had a high quality fire control, it would be much more like the point and click feel you have in a Valk, Vulture, or other agile ship.
I also talked about 'computers' which limited how much 'fire control' you could have. Imagine for instance you have a corvette with 4 turrets and one computer slot, and the best fire control is rated a '3'. The if the owner wanted all four turrets with type 3 fire control, he'd need to buy a computer rated at least a 12. Suppose an '18' is the best computer on the market. Well, the owner of the 4 turret ship can upgrade to the best computer he really needs comparitively cheaply compared to someone with a 6 turret ship and only one computer slot. Now suppose someone has a ship with 20 turrets and just two computer slots. The best computer rating he can have is a 36(18x2) which is only good enough to make at most 16 of the 20 turrets have class 2 fire control, and the rest have lowly class 1 fire control. The result is that the first ship, though it has fewer guns, is probably better on the whole vs. small zippy fighters, where as the big ship has to make up for its inaccuracy with shear volumn of fire and is probably better off concentrating on relatively unagile targets (like other big ships). To me this creates an ideal situation, in which everything has a weak spot which something else can cover for, but despite this everyone is still able to configure thier ship according to thier particular style.
In my opinion, noone can aim more than one turret at a time, so if you have a multi-turret ship, then you have to have at least some of the work split up.
Sadly for you (and good for me and others who feel like me) the devs have already stated that there will be multiple players controlling one ship. It's in the MMORPG info thing:
>>> Multiple characters will be able to use a single large ship,
>>> either by piloting the vessel or manning defense turrets. Craft
>>> of a certain scale may contain docking bays, allowing users to
>>> transport and launch their smaller ships from the larger.
http://www.guildsoftware.com/ven.ships.and.addons.html
heh
>>> Multiple characters will be able to use a single large ship,
>>> either by piloting the vessel or manning defense turrets. Craft
>>> of a certain scale may contain docking bays, allowing users to
>>> transport and launch their smaller ships from the larger.
http://www.guildsoftware.com/ven.ships.and.addons.html
heh
roguelazer: Sadly for you, I believe there is nothing in your quotation which percludes exactly the description I just gave.
At the most it suggests that the devs are, as usual, planning to be ambitious than I really think is necessary.
At the most it suggests that the devs are, as usual, planning to be ambitious than I really think is necessary.
It seemed to be reading your post that you would emphasize having AI turrets before player controlled turrets, whereas the devs don't even mention AI controlled turrets.
hm.
first off, SFC is a game unknown to me, acronymfinder.com returns 40 meanings, google supplies no satisfactory results. care to elucidate?
HPT returns 16 meanings, none fits well in the context.
about the AI (especially turrets):
i did read your post about turrets. thoroughly.
mind you, i'm not saying that every turret should be manned by a single player. i'd rather see a fire control interface happening, that allows the user to assign targets specifically (a flock of gunships, e.g.).
your idea focuses on single turret usage. mine focuses on batteries.
i know that you intended for an AI that acts according to preselectable priorities. your intentions and mine (regarding turrets) do not exclude themselves, instead, they complement one another.
i want a multitude of turrets to track one single target, if need be, hence the subdivision in forward, port, starboard and aft turret batteries. your solution would cause the turrets to scatter their fire more often than not. although that is clearly desirable when having small fighters buzz you, if you need/want to take out a certain target at once, the ai might be not customizable enough to handle it.
i'll reply in the other thread as i don't want to delve too deep in this one here.
now, to defend my ideas ;)
i still think that it would be useful to have subdivisions of tasks, as the opulence of details that require handling and thought could easily overwhelm a single user. and yes, i have played at ship simulators (aces of the deep, e.g.) and found it *way* to complicated for a quick start or prolonged use.
as much as i'd like to think of myself as a "naval freak", it was simply too much.
now, if i knew what SFC was/is and where i could find it, maybe i'd be able to reply with more homework done.
first off, SFC is a game unknown to me, acronymfinder.com returns 40 meanings, google supplies no satisfactory results. care to elucidate?
HPT returns 16 meanings, none fits well in the context.
about the AI (especially turrets):
i did read your post about turrets. thoroughly.
mind you, i'm not saying that every turret should be manned by a single player. i'd rather see a fire control interface happening, that allows the user to assign targets specifically (a flock of gunships, e.g.).
your idea focuses on single turret usage. mine focuses on batteries.
i know that you intended for an AI that acts according to preselectable priorities. your intentions and mine (regarding turrets) do not exclude themselves, instead, they complement one another.
i want a multitude of turrets to track one single target, if need be, hence the subdivision in forward, port, starboard and aft turret batteries. your solution would cause the turrets to scatter their fire more often than not. although that is clearly desirable when having small fighters buzz you, if you need/want to take out a certain target at once, the ai might be not customizable enough to handle it.
i'll reply in the other thread as i don't want to delve too deep in this one here.
now, to defend my ideas ;)
i still think that it would be useful to have subdivisions of tasks, as the opulence of details that require handling and thought could easily overwhelm a single user. and yes, i have played at ship simulators (aces of the deep, e.g.) and found it *way* to complicated for a quick start or prolonged use.
as much as i'd like to think of myself as a "naval freak", it was simply too much.
now, if i knew what SFC was/is and where i could find it, maybe i'd be able to reply with more homework done.