Author Topic: Ideas & Suggestions  (Read 10084 times)

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Offline StarSlayer

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Quote
Blue 1 - Athena says she's dumping Helo wants to meet you on the launch tubes for some hot cylon loving. Land immediately.
I've just ejected!!!!

I will cut a hole in my flight suit and use the resultant venting air to propel me back to the Galactica.
“Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world”

 

Offline Angelus

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Quote
Blue 1 - Athena says she's dumping Helo wants to meet you on the launch tubes for some hot cylon loving. Land immediately.
I've just ejected!!!!

I will cut a hole in my flight suit and use the resultant venting air to propel me back to the Galactica.

 :lol:

sounds like: eat beans...use afterburner

 

Offline Dragon

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So now we've replaced the reasons that ejections don't work with 2-3 minutes of boring gameplay where you sit and wait for a pick up followed by all the reasons AWOL debriefings don't work.
For the boring part, the time could simply be accelerated, especially since Diaspora doesn't use beams. There should be a training message informing the players they can do that.
Perhaps ejecting should be allowed only a limited amount of times in campaign, resulting in a failure when player exceeds the limit. This would stop people from ejecting just to save time (not to skip objectives, since after ejection, most of them would fail). Wing Commander had something similar in place, and in BSG, berating you for wasting Vipers/Raptors would actually make sense.

Note that this is realistic. Real pilots are only allowed to eject a certain number of times before being relegated to desk duty. The reason for this is damage to the pilot's body that the ejection inflicts (IIRC, depending on the aircraft speed and type of the seat, the forces may exceed 20G). I don't think Viper seats would be any different in that regard, and Cylons don't get to eject anyway (BTW, if there's ever a mission where you turn out to be a Cylon and betray Colonials, ejection should result in you being shot).

 

Offline The E

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Have you ever heard of a game called "Too Human"? It too had more-or-less unskippable post-death/pre-ressurection cutscenes. It was not something that people liked.

Also, while it may be realistic for ejected fighter pilots to be rescued and put back into the fight a couple days later (NOT immediately, because how stupid would you have to be to go into a cockpit after an eject without having the doc check you out first?), your proposed thing of "Return to baseship, grab new Viper, get back into the fight" is anything but.

Besides, and this is to preempt your point about these scenes being skippable, this whole thing, if implemented, undermines one of the basic gameplay concepts Diaspora is built around. I will let you figure out which one.
If I'm just aching this can't go on
I came from chasing dreams to feel alone
There must be changes, miss to feel strong
I really need lifе to touch me
--Evergrey, Where August Mourns

 

Offline newman

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I will let you figure out which one.

I want whatever you're having. I haven't been that optimistic in years :P

You know what the chain of command is? It's the chain I go get and beat you with 'til ya understand who's in ruttin' command here! - Jayne Cobb

 

Offline Dragon

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Also, while it may be realistic for ejected fighter pilots to be rescued and put back into the fight a couple days later (NOT immediately, because how stupid would you have to be to go into a cockpit after an eject without having the doc check you out first?), your proposed thing of "Return to baseship, grab new Viper, get back into the fight" is anything but.
Stupid or desperate. Note that in BSG, there indeed are times of desperation when such thing would be justified. And even then, a pilot would be able to eject only once or twice (maybe even 3 or 4 times, if everything is at stake) before being hospitalized or stuck aiming a turret (m!m's script could help with that). I remember hearing about a BSG episode when a really sick guy (don't remember who, this episode wasn't among the ones I've seen) showed up in a Viper and (IIRC) resolved a tight situation, prompting this exchange:
Quote from: BSG
-You can barely stand!
-A Viper is flown in a seated position, Sir!
Surely, under normal conditions, a pilot would wait a few days before getting back into flight. Normal conditions stopped really applying when Cylons nuked the colonies though, so I think pushing a pilot to such extremes can be justified in extreme situations, which aren't exactly uncommon in BSG universe. Being crippled for life beats dying, at least IMO.

I know the whole thing would be rather "Un-Diaspora-like", because it'd essentially allow the player to reload his weapons and missiles, where a major theme in Diaspora is that you have to do with what you get. There's only one place where it'd have any practical utility, along with in-flight reloads I mentioned earlier in another thread. A huge, all-out, all-or-nothing battle, where loss equals death of everyone on the player's side. Perhaps a final mission of a campaign. Diaspora team might not use the idea (and I don't really think they will), of course, but that doesn't mean community FREDers won't.

 

Offline Angelus

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Also, while it may be realistic for ejected fighter pilots to be rescued and put back into the fight a couple days later (NOT immediately, because how stupid would you have to be to go into a cockpit after an eject without having the doc check you out first?), your proposed thing of "Return to baseship, grab new Viper, get back into the fight" is anything but.
Stupid or desperate. Note that in BSG, there indeed are times of desperation when such thing would be justified. And even then, a pilot would be able to eject only once or twice (maybe even 3 or 4 times, if everything is at stake) before being hospitalized or stuck aiming a turret (m!m's script could help with that). I remember hearing about a BSG episode when a really sick guy (don't remember who, this episode wasn't among the ones I've seen) showed up in a Viper and (IIRC) resolved a tight situation, prompting this exchange:
Quote from: BSG
-You can barely stand!
-A Viper is flown in a seated position, Sir!


That's from the TOS show.

 

Offline newman

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You really need to watch more than a few episodes of the show, before you start teaching about it to die-hard fans who liked it enough to go spend years making a game about it for free. Now, they never let pilots who can barely stand or have just ejected fly their vipers. Even though the situations could be desperate, if you were deemed unfit you didn't fly - as evidenced by "The Hand of God" where Starbuck was grounded because the old man said her legs probably wouldn't handle the g-forces. Flying a fighter isn't the same as being in infantry; if they let you fly while medically unfit, you could potentially do more harm than good up there.

tl,dr; won't happen.
You know what the chain of command is? It's the chain I go get and beat you with 'til ya understand who's in ruttin' command here! - Jayne Cobb

 

Offline karajorma

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Give it up Dragon, it's a dumb idea, it would be a complete PITA to add and it breaks the fundamental rule of not allowing the player to rearm. It's not going to happen. If you think it's such a good idea, you have plenty of badges, feel free to find someone on one of the other campaigns you work for dumb enough to attempt this.
Karajorma's Freespace FAQ. It's almost like asking me yourself.

[ Diaspora ] - [ Seeds Of Rebellion ] - [ Mind Games ]

 

Offline HeadScar

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Related to the little sound output. I missed to look up the colour which indicates a hit on the HUD, sorry. All I can say is theres some colour highlighting.
IMO it would work best as optional feature, can be turned on/off by pressing a key. The beep sound could be a very low and harmonic tone, nothing resulting in stress.

//edit: To me it has a clear advantage over the current gameplay. Example: If I hit a thing and hear about the impact in the same time I don't have to check the left bottom HUD that often because I now can guess how damaged my target is. A Couple of 'e e e' tones in a row mean he must lost 15-30 % of is remaining hull. So I can concentrate on my flying, might watch his rotation in the HUD but theres no more need to look at the targets damage that often as I used to do it. The little text displaying the damage is really more then just a info output, it's another target for your quick eyes only - just like, outside of the window ...the action zone. The text is too much to concentrate on IMO.
« Last Edit: October 12, 2012, 02:20:24 pm by HeadScar »
And I hope u like jammin', too

 

Offline Ace

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You don't have to check the bottom left HUD, target damage is displayed in the central reticle area as well.
Ace
Self-plagiarism is style.
-Alfred Hitchcock

 
Hi guys,

I've just found the game and played it, simply amazing.

But I have a few suggestions that may enhance the atmosphere in game:

- I found that the cockpit of the viper is very detailed and simply looks great.
  But when I look outside it appears as if there is no windscreen (cockpitglass)
  A small addition may be a few scratches on the cockpit-glass to indicate that the viper is active for some time and you get the idea that you actually have a closed cockpit.
This is of course a minor thing. You might think of doing this if you have some spare time.

- As stated in one of the reviews: The DRADIS is hard to read. I found that it is to small to be of great help.
  Don't get me wrong, I like the addition of DRADIS but if it were a bit bigger it would be easier to read.
  This is again a minor concern as you can do without. I play multiple flight sims so I am used to look at the radar.

- When I played the game I found that I could not look down in the cockpit or so.
  As you developers took the time to model the cockpit in such detail I had hoped to be able to look around and look at the things you put in.
  I would love to see this in-game.

As for missions, maybe in future releases you could implement  a diversity of missions.
Like this:

- Fly a CAP around the fleet (or anything else), (have a) chat over wireless with your pilots and/or your homeship, and intercept some small amounts of raiders and return home. (even in the series you don't have a major battle every episode)

- Escort a miningship to a asteroid => fly some circles => intercept a small to medium group of cylons => go home

- and every now and then a major basestar(s) vs Battlestar battle

This would bring some diversity to the game and enables to bring a story about the fleet, the pilots, and it could help create atmosphere about the characters in game (in which I mean the pilots you fly with, to bring some humanity with it)

Again there is nothing wrong with the game. On the contrary, the game is amazing.
These are just some thoughts which could add to it.

I do not know anything about gamemaking so if any of these options above takes a lot of time... Please don't burn me down, just trying to help.
sorry for the long post
A voice from the dark called out and said: Smile and be happy, things could be worse. So I smiled and was happy, and things did get worse...

 

Offline newman

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- I found that the cockpit of the viper is very detailed and simply looks great.
  But when I look outside it appears as if there is no windscreen (cockpitglass)
  A small addition may be a few scratches on the cockpit-glass to indicate that the viper is active for some time and you get the idea that you actually have a closed cockpit.

The canopy was there, but ultimately removed due to problems with how the engine handled transparency. However, canopies will probably make a comeback at some point, when we have time to research a good method to do it again.


- As stated in one of the reviews: The DRADIS is hard to read. I found that it is to small to be of great help.
  Don't get me wrong, I like the addition of DRADIS but if it were a bit bigger it would be easier to read.
  This is again a minor concern as you can do without. I play multiple flight sims so I am used to look at the radar.

The problem is, we can't do anything about this without altering the canon look of the cockpit. Since it's entirely possible to play even without looking at the DRADIS screen, we opted to not modify the canon look of things. Screen readability will depend on what craft you're flying, your set resolution, and fov.


- When I played the game I found that I could not look down in the cockpit or so.
  As you developers took the time to model the cockpit in such detail I had hoped to be able to look around and look at the things you put in.
  I would love to see this in-game.

Complete viewing freedom is only possible with a head tracking device, such as TrackIR or a freetrack setup. It is also possible to use "padlock view", which locks your view to your current target. It is possible to check out the whole cockpit in this way, if you want to do that.

About missions, remember that we only had 6 main missions to play with this time around. We have no lack of ideas on what to do in the future, and I do think R1 missions are quite diverse. But there's only so much plot you can do with a 6 mission campaign. However, the whole point of episodic release scheme was to not have to do everything at once, but rather have smaller, more realistic goals and improve on what we have with each release.
You know what the chain of command is? It's the chain I go get and beat you with 'til ya understand who's in ruttin' command here! - Jayne Cobb

 

Offline karajorma

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- Escort a miningship to a asteroid => fly some circles => intercept a small to medium group of cylons => go home

We did that in Beyond the Red Line already. We didn't want to revisit it quite so quickly or people might think we were already out of ideas. :D
Karajorma's Freespace FAQ. It's almost like asking me yourself.

[ Diaspora ] - [ Seeds Of Rebellion ] - [ Mind Games ]

 
Quote
About missions, remember that we only had 6 main missions to play with this time around. We have no lack of ideas on what to do in the future, and I do think R1 missions are quite diverse. But there's only so much plot you can do with a 6 mission campaign. However, the whole point of episodic release scheme was to not have to do everything at once, but rather have smaller, more realistic goals and improve on what we have with each release.

I think I put my statement in the wrong way....
With R1 missions is nothing wrong. The story is about the beginning of the war with a lot of chaos and hectic situations. You did a remarkable job in showing that.
My suggestions focus more on the following days/Weeks in the story.

- Escort a miningship to a asteroid => fly some circles => intercept a small to medium group of cylons => go home

We did that in Beyond the Red Line already. We didn't want to revisit it quite so quickly or people might think we were already out of ideas. :D

I just thought that it would be a good addition for the story along the way... Not necessarily in the next release.

As I said before I fly a lot in combat flight sims which have many different missions, from CAP to heavy bomber intercept, from fighter sweep to strike missions. I just thought that I could use my experience in those missions and just pop it up and maybe it would help you guys get another perspective about the possibilities how to continue the story.

Anyways, you guys amazed me with what you have done so far...
I have no doubt that you will bring up something good.
So I challenge you to amaze me again  :D

Cheers,

Ghost
A voice from the dark called out and said: Smile and be happy, things could be worse. So I smiled and was happy, and things did get worse...

 

Offline newman

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Don't worry - we've been at this for over 4 years; like I said there's no lack of ideas on what to do in the future :)
You know what the chain of command is? It's the chain I go get and beat you with 'til ya understand who's in ruttin' command here! - Jayne Cobb