Author Topic: Player Capship Gameplay and Mechanics  (Read 21656 times)

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Offline NGTM-1R

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Re: Player Capship Gameplay and Mechanics
They don't - they're way too overkill as-is.

On the other hand, it would be completely consistent with how they're designed and force their cruiser escorts to defend their flanks more diligently.
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Re: Player Capship Gameplay and Mechanics
*talking about a player controlled in-mission short jump*

Do want. I've been wanting to try to implement that in one way or another via SEXPs, but haven't had much time to think it through. If BP-Multi manages to do, it is definitively something that I (and probably a lot of other people) could use.

 

Offline FSW

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Re: Player Capship Gameplay and Mechanics
I'd like to see a player-controlled AWACS vessel that relies exclusively on these special abilities to support other ships.

Example brainstorm:

Increase range of friendly ship weapons
Decrease cooldown of friendly ship special abilities
Enable tactical jumps for friendly ships
Increase friendly ship turret AI

Jam enemy ship main weapons (vs capships)
Jam enemy ship turrets and flak (vs bombs and fighters)
Disable enemy ship engines
Jam enemy ship special abilities
Create friendly decoy targets

Call in subspace missiles
Call in heavy fighters
Call in a transport to repair friendly ships

 

Offline Destiny

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Re: Player Capship Gameplay and Mechanics
The AWACS thing is pretty good. I'd actually like to fly a Charybdis...but the most important feature of the AWACS is jamming non-subspace comms and denying the enemy the ability to C-4-1.


Maybe signal/tag a target for turrets to shoot at, i.e. targeting the weapons subsystem of the enemy ship so the turrets concentrate on it.

 

Offline bigchunk1

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Re: Player Capship Gameplay and Mechanics
I like this idea, it would be something to do further down the road if we use it. Calling in subspace missiles and heavy fighters isn't too difficult using the ability system I have in mind.

For now, getting abilities for the ships we have in the game would be a nice start.

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Re: Player Capship Gameplay and Mechanics
Not sure how easy it would be to FRED, but the Nara could certainly use an ability that allows it's guns to fire from far beyond normal maximum range, maybe even finding a way to have another ship feed it targeting data?

 

Offline MatthTheGeek

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Re: Player Capship Gameplay and Mechanics
... it already has an awesome range. What's with your ideas of improving ships at what they're already best at ?
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Offline Lester

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Re: Player Capship Gameplay and Mechanics
I'd like to see a player-controlled AWACS vessel that relies exclusively on these special abilities to support other ships.

Example brainstorm:

Increase range of friendly ship weapons
Decrease cooldown of friendly ship special abilities
Enable tactical jumps for friendly ships
Increase friendly ship turret AI

Jam enemy ship main weapons (vs capships)
Jam enemy ship turrets and flak (vs bombs and fighters)
Disable enemy ship engines
Jam enemy ship special abilities
Create friendly decoy targets

Call in subspace missiles
Call in heavy fighters
Call in a transport to repair friendly ships
An excellent idea. Maybe we could use the recently converted heavy AWACS model for this. The best about the idea that everything that you listed can be done without any new code.

I do have doubts about increasing friendly turret rate of fire, though. Currently, we're using BALLS OF STEELE as the AI class if you direct all of your energy to weapons, and the current AI .tbl cannot supply us with a higher rate of fire.
« Last Edit: June 07, 2011, 02:27:06 pm by Lester »

 

Offline bigchunk1

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Re: Player Capship Gameplay and Mechanics
Not sure how easy it would be to FRED, but the Nara could certainly use an ability that allows it's guns to fire from far beyond normal maximum range, maybe even finding a way to have another ship feed it targeting data?

Those are both absolutely possible to do. The second part takes a bit more work, involving a distance check on every friendly ship to every hostile ship and some kind of argument list, so it might be too complex for a first ability. Max range on a Nara is about 12 Kilometers, which is quite far. The ability can be made to be less powerful by limiting the duration or limiting the range upgraded.   
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Re: Player Capship Gameplay and Mechanics
... it already has an awesome range. What's with your ideas of improving ships at what they're already best at ?

Because the Nara is the only UEF ship in it's tactical niche, and if it's possible to make it better at it's job then why wouldn't you? Making ships capable of doing all things well is, at best, going to doom them to mediocrity, or at worst make them OP. Why not give the different ships in the multiplayer project defined roles that they can be even better at through cooperation, thereby encouraging such in gameplay, hmm?

In any case, it's only an idea, and ideas were what we were asked for.

 

Offline bigchunk1

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Re: Player Capship Gameplay and Mechanics
Yes ideas here are good, especially ones we haven't thought of before.
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Offline Trivial Psychic

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Re: Player Capship Gameplay and Mechanics
I'd like to see a player-controlled AWACS vessel that relies exclusively on these special abilities to support other ships.

Disable enemy ship engines
I'm not sure if this is what you meant, but how about jamming your enemy's subspace jump plotting system?  Storywise, it would force an enemy to crash-jump to escape a battlefield, but that doesn't translate well into multiplayer, so I would suggest that it only jams their ability to plot short-range nanojumps, corresponding to my rundown further back in the thread.  So basically it would prevent any ship capable of nanojumps, from being able to use them.  And perhaps as FSW suggested, allowing friendly ships that can't do nanojumps on their own, to perform said jumps when a friendly AWACS is present.
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Offline Hades

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Re: Player Capship Gameplay and Mechanics
I could also see AWACs doing stuff like heavy ECM stuff, disrupting sensors, reducing turret accuracy, jamming torpedoes, that kind of stuff.
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Re: Player Capship Gameplay and Mechanics
If this ends up turning into a capship TvT, would it be possible for AWACS to prevent respawns for a period of time, thereby allowing freindly ships an easier time wailing on a few remaining ships on a team? It would have to be heavily balanced, and have a relatively short duration, but it could be used to simulate Com jamming and such.

 

Offline General Battuta

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Re: Player Capship Gameplay and Mechanics
Guys, a lot of these ideas just sound like they aren't much fun. Think of what it's like to be on the receiving end of them. Unable to respawn? Unable to move?

Take a cue from good multiplayer game designers - don't overly restrict player action. Classes that do stuff like that are annoying.

 
Re: Player Capship Gameplay and Mechanics
Actually, he's right any sort of meaningful respawn delay would probably just end up being annoying. Still, a good way to simulate E-war without actively ****ing the balance too much would be cool, so the small accuracy debuffs and whatnot posted above are likely still worth a look.

 

Offline bigchunk1

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Re: Player Capship Gameplay and Mechanics
I'm starting to like the idea of a Nanojump ability. It would be a nice way to give smaller, short ranged ships a leg up on larger vessels. I however can't see how you would do it by actually warping out the ship, it would have to involve using the open-warphole sexp and moving the ship with set-object-position. It might look a little goofy unless movement is perfectly timed when the capship hits the warphole. The Nanojump destination would probably work best in a hardcoded distance and a hardcoded direction from the jumping ship. I'm thinking maybe 2-3 kilometers forward? 
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Offline Lester

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Re: Player Capship Gameplay and Mechanics
If this ends up turning into a capship TvT, would it be possible for AWACS to prevent respawns for a period of time, thereby allowing freindly ships an easier time wailing on a few remaining ships on a team? It would have to be heavily balanced, and have a relatively short duration, but it could be used to simulate Com jamming and such.
It wouldn't only be annoying as hell, it's also impossible to FRED.

I'm starting to like the idea of a Nanojump ability. It would be a nice way to give smaller, short ranged ships a leg up on larger vessels. I however can't see how you would do it by actually warping out the ship, it would have to involve using the open-warphole sexp and moving the ship with set-object-position. It might look a little goofy unless movement is perfectly timed when the capship hits the warphole. The Nanojump destination would probably work best in a hardcoded distance and a hardcoded direction from the jumping ship. I'm thinking maybe 2-3 kilometers forward? 
Currently, warp effects only work for the host, and I'm not sure how ship-maneouver would work in multi. You'd also need something to prevent players spawning in other ships during warping.

 
Re: Player Capship Gameplay and Mechanics
Here's an idea for the short-range ship warping: make it a pulsed STL-maneuvering jump, by rapidly turning the drive on and off a few hundred times per second, and teleporting the ship a few inches per jump. This way, you don't need the normal subspace effect. You don't need to worry about spawning inside the warping ship. And most importantly, it could be done just by amping up afterburner fuel consumption, afterburner acceleration, and afterburner top speed. While the warp ability is active, stop the afterburner recharge - that way, when you run out of juice and stop, you can't readily afterburner back up to speed.

I'd suggest a cool looking bubble or trail effect with this. Maybe even superimpose the virtually blinding bomb-flash or sun glare in for the warping ship, and make it glow really, really brightly?

And let's not forget one of my favorite moments from retail FS2: "Dive dive dive, hit your burners pilot!"
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Offline Destiny

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Re: Player Capship Gameplay and Mechanics
Unless you're Steele or the GTVA Combat Evaluation Unit, your subspace drive'll blow up or something, plus the warp effect is so cool.