[Mastadon]

Hi everyone.

In a similar vein to my "target my attacker" cycles through all attackers patch, I have finished modifications to the target next / prev bomb(er) key so that the closest hostile bombs are targeted first and, if no hostile bombs are available, then any ship that is either a bomber or has been designated as being targeted as a bomb are targeted such that the closest bomber / designated bomb is targeted first. While a patch like this isn't going to be as useful when playing FS2 retail outside of a mission like "Clash of the Titans II", there are some FSO mods that would benefit more from this (such as Blue Planet I and, possibly, Blue Planet II).

I've attached both the patch and a test mission that does a really good job of testing the nuances of the bomb targeting key.


In addition to general feedback, I would appreciate some ideas on how to tackle one of the more complex questions that I am not sure how to tackle just yet: how to deal with targeting both bombs and bombers without simply ignoring bombers while bombs are present. Again, that's not so big of a problem in FS2 retail outside of a mission like "Clash of the Titans II", but in the more bomber-heavy mods, it's not uncommon for a hostile bomb to appear 8000 meters away from you while you have a wing of bombers closing on a friendly capital ship 1000 meters off your port stern. Obviously, you have little chance of being able to do something about the bomb 8000 meters away, but you can do something about the bombers off your port stern.

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[QuantumDelta]

By "benefit more from" you mean, the FS2 campaign wont use it at all, right?

[Dragon]

No, he means that this feature will not be noticeable in the main campaign, because it lacks situations where it could really shine. It's a minor interface adjustment from gameplay standpoint, but should make bomber-intensive missions less annoying.

[QuantumDelta]

Err.. No.
The fact that the button prioritises bombs is pretty critical whether they're a long way off or not. If a bomber is closer it's easy enough to use target in reticle, or closest hostile to target it, bombs should always, always have priority.
So unless you're going to champion an even bigger gameplay change; a new button one for each.
It's a terrible change.

Not that I give a crap if bad players want a lazy button to target a bomber that you're behind instead of the bomb it just launched that's streaming away towards a capship considering they're 5% the size....

Also, how close do mastadon's changes have to be to 'press ctrl to insta-kill targeted enemy' before they're seen as major gameplay changes? Because although I /like/ his other patch and appreciate that it should have probably been in initially, there's a lot of missions where it will basically replace /every targeting button/.
Especially TvT/DF Multi, it's an absolutely godlike tactical change in organised high skill squad wars matches because targeting tells you a lot about enemy tactics.

[Dragon]

From what I understand, this is exactly what it does. The OP isn't terribly clear on the difference between the new and old behavior though (bombs were always prioritized).

[Sushi]

When I want to target bombers and not bombs, I usually end up using "target target's attacker" as my way of doing that. That has the additional bonus of only targeting bombers attacking the ship I care about.

[mjn.mixael]

I always forget what 'target target's attacker' is...

[Spoon]

Especially TvT/DF Multi, it's an absolutely godlike tactical change in organised high skill squad wars matches because targeting tells you a lot about enemy tactics.

How many of these "organised high skill squad wars matches " have been played the past 2 years and are being planned to be played in the next 5 years?

there's a lot of missions where it will basically replace /every targeting button/.

Heavens forbid, not everyone using the massive amount of redundant targeting buttons that freespace has

[Mastadon]

Err.. No.
The fact that the button prioritises bombs is pretty critical whether they're a long way off or not. If a bomber is closer it's easy enough to use target in reticle, or closest hostile to target it, bombs should always, always have priority.
So unless you're going to champion an even bigger gameplay change; a new button one for each.
It's a terrible change.

The primary motivation in writing this patch is to make mods that are bomber intensive w/ large fighter escort more playable---think Blue Planet and especially WC Darkest Dawn. Take Darkest Dawn for example. There are a number of escort missions where there are no less than four wings of bombers vectoring in on your large battle group (6--9 ships, sometimes more). Each of these wings has at least one or two wings of fighters escorting it. To successfully run bomber defense in that mod, you need to basically ignore the fighters---who will most certainly not ignore you---and concentrate on the bombers, all of which launch torpedo that can and will blow a cruiser out of the sky in one or two hits. Finally, there's almost always one or two enemy cap ship missiles whizzing around too. In such a situation, you cannot afford to cycle through the half-dozen fighters gunning for you and launching missiles that can destroy you in one or two hits just to find the bomber closest to you. And with more than 5 escorts at once, the target target's attacker tactic just doesn't scale well enough.

So in short, there does need to be some way to filter out the noise and be able to find just bombers. And the more I think about it, adding a new targeting key that targets only bombers might just be the way to go...Alt + B maybe?

Not that I give a crap if bad players want a lazy button to target a bomber that you're behind instead of the bomb it just launched that's streaming away towards a capship considering they're 5% the size....

See above.

Also, how close do mastadon's changes have to be to 'press ctrl to insta-kill targeted enemy' before they're seen as major gameplay changes? Because although I /like/ his other patch and appreciate that it should have probably been in initially, there's a lot of missions where it will basically replace /every targeting button/.
Especially TvT/DF Multi, it's an absolutely godlike tactical change in organised high skill squad wars matches because targeting tells you a lot about enemy tactics.

I am unfamiliar with the current encantation of FS2 Multi. My experience dates back to circa 2002, back before the source code was released by and squadwar.com was still ran by . Could you give me a brief summary of what's changed since then? Are you still trying to destroy Alpha wing? 

Seriously, though, how would a player be able to tell how an enemy is targeting w/o resorting to an obsessive monitoring of one or two players that will very likely end up getting you the "morning star / dual fire Tornado" treatment?

[MatthTheGeek]

The primary motivation in writing this patch is to make mods that are bomber intensive w/ large fighter escort more playable---think Blue Planet and especially WC Darkest Dawn.

You realize WCS doesn't use FSO, right ? Your patch won't fix anything for em.

[Mastadon]

The primary motivation in writing this patch is to make mods that are bomber intensive w/ large fighter escort more playable---think Blue Planet and especially WC Darkest Dawn.

You realize WCS doesn't use FSO, right ? Your patch won't fix anything for em.

Sadly, yes, I'm aware that WCS forked from FSO, which means when they release the source code, I'll want to port the final patch over to WCS.

[MatthTheGeek]

If.

[FSW]

I don't understand what this patch does. How is it different from retail behaviour?

[QuantumDelta]

Spoon; if SW happens it will more than likely breed a significant resurgence in multi.
Mastadon; your logic for this implementation (as it stands) is unfortunately a negative thing for higher skill players so that lower skill players are less punished, what you're ultimately aiming for is still the same.
The only way to get what you want without impacting advanced play is an additional key... coincidentally "D" is not used on the keyboard default keybindings... (I use it for equalise energy ;x) Though alt-b works.

It'd be nice if you left a toggle in to keep default behaviour though, I like it the way it is atm, I always want to know where all the bombs are (more often, so that I know what bombers are firing what and where if I don't have it memorised).

The reason I dislike what you're doing is because it strips away global awareness (which is king, especially in the harder missions, you can watch more or less any of my BP videos for examples of how much of a difference it makes, even, constract Aristeia - a mission I don't know off by heart, to ...Delenda Est, especially on my latest try which is using a version which currently, most people are finding impossible), to allow for laziness and local awareness, which is often not even all that important =<
I hope you can see why I object to it being hardcoded behaviour ;x

As for multi; it's done via teamwork with the target target targetting target and, before the voice comms age it was communicated via squad orders.
Multi - so far as the simple NWTR missions went, mostly consisted off initial set up; 1) Put highest skill of the opposing team on escort list until you run out of room, 2) assign all hotkeys, 3) target subsystems pertinent to the craft they're in.
1 and 3 constantly need to be refreshed.
After that, aside from chasing your target/swapping targets tactically/whatever you're constantly monitoring what the other players are doing so you can adjust your strategy to compensate/take advantage of mistakes.

.........And ms/torn = realm of the low-mid skill, to the point where it didn't even work on the very high skill :/ (One or two MS users were exceptionally skilled enough (most of them used mice or something similar like a trackball) to make it somewhat effective in a support-stop-your-teammate-getting-insta-butchered way).

The idea was that a high enough skill player (and, there were at least 30 odd people capable of this in 2002) would be able to continue flying in such a way that they were extremely difficult to shoot down while doing all of this.
Even amongst the very best offensive potential would suffer slightly while doing it (hence where this change effects things, because it's only one button it makes it comparatively no effort), but the defence would still remain.

[Spoon]

Spoon; if SW happens it will more than likely breed a significant resurgence in multi.

It'll never happen. Ever.
I think its time to wake up from that dream and especially to stop bringing it as an argument against things that could improve the gameplay experience for people that only play freespace as a single player experience (protip: that's 99% of the players out there). It's 2012, if you want a good multiplayer experience there are DOZENDS of games out there to provide it. Freespace will never ever become an active multiplayer community again.
Your arguments sound really silly to me. "In 2002 there were a few dudes that did this and that in a certain way. And this is why I am against changing a targeting key in 2012 because that would make 'bad players', 'lazy". What is this I dont even.

[Mastadon]

I don't understand what this patch does. How is it different from retail behaviour?

The current retail behavior for the "cycle next/prev bomb(er)" is to cycle through all hostile missiles in the order in which they were created by the FSO engine and then, if there are no hostile bombs, cycle through both all hostile bombers and all hostiles with the OF_TARGETABLE_AS_BOMB flag set by the mission designer in the order in which they were created by the FSO engine.

My patch changes this behavior such that instead of bombs or bombers being returned in creation order, they are returned relative to how close they are to you. This is essentially the same thing I did with the "target closest attacker" key, but with respect to bombs and bombers.

[Mastadon]

Mastadon; your logic for this implementation (as it stands) is unfortunately a negative thing for higher skill players so that lower skill players are less punished, what you're ultimately aiming for is still the same.

I disagree with you here. If you aren't at least taking a look at the bigger picture every now and then, it doesn't matter how easily you can find the closest bomb / bomber to you, you'll still pay for your lack of vision.

The only way to get what you want without impacting advanced play is an additional key... coincidentally "D" is not used on the keyboard default keybindings... (I use it for equalise energy ;x) Though alt-b works.

On this point, I fully agree with you...at least with the implementation of the next phase of my patch: how to target the next closest / farthest bomber while ignoring hostile bombs. Furthermore, implementing a separate targeting key that only targets hostile bombers will be much easier to implement anyways.

It'd be nice if you left a toggle in to keep default behaviour though, I like it the way it is atm, I always want to know where all the bombs are (more often, so that I know what bombers are firing what and where if I don't have it memorised).

See above. My patch only changes the order in which bombs and, if there are no bombs present, bombers are targeted. It changes neither the types of targets nor the overall number of targets that would be returned to you.

The reason I dislike what you're doing is because it strips away global awareness (which is king, especially in the harder missions, you can watch more or less any of my BP videos for examples of how much of a difference it makes, even, constract Aristeia - a mission I don't know off by heart, to ...Delenda Est, especially on my latest try which is using a version which currently, most people are finding impossible), to allow for laziness and local awareness, which is often not even all that important =<

How would my patch in its current form strip away global awareness? If anything, it would improve global awareness by allowing you to find out which bomb / bomber is either closest or farthest from you (by pressing shift + B) without having to cycle through all of them and trying to figure out from memory which one is closer / farther away.

As for multi; it's done via teamwork with the target target targetting target and, before the voice comms age it was communicated via squad orders.
Multi - so far as the simple NWTR missions went, mostly consisted off initial set up; 1) Put highest skill of the opposing team on escort list until you run out of room, 2) assign all hotkeys, 3) target subsystems pertinent to the craft they're in.
1 and 3 constantly need to be refreshed.
After that, aside from chasing your target/swapping targets tactically/whatever you're constantly monitoring what the other players are doing so you can adjust your strategy to compensate/take advantage of mistakes.

I don't have any current multi experience on which to offer any sort of intelligent response to your statements. My only question would be: how would returning the bombs and, if no bombs, bombers in order from closest to farthest change things...especially if you monitor specific players that religiously? I never did, and I did all right....

.........And ms/torn = realm of the low-mid skill, to the point where it didn't even work on the very high skill :/ (One or two MS users were exceptionally skilled enough (most of them used mice or something similar like a trackball) to make it somewhat effective in a support-stop-your-teammate-getting-insta-butchered way).

The idea was that a high enough skill player (and, there were at least 30 odd people capable of this in 2002) would be able to continue flying in such a way that they were extremely difficult to shoot down while doing all of this.

You mean by using the "corkscrew maneuver" to defeat both hud target leading and (most) tornado strikes?

Even amongst the very best offensive potential would suffer slightly while doing it (hence where this change effects things, because it's only one button it makes it comparatively no effort), but the defence would still remain.

My change wouldn't affect a fighter-vs-fighter situation at all. In the case of a TvT defense mission, I actually don't think my patch would change anything significantly, since all a player has to do to target bombers....possibly even the closest one...is to assign the players that are flying bombers to a hotkey group. So technically, people in multiplayer can already target bombers only.

[QuantumDelta]

I didn't say your patch did, but what you seemed to be aiming for with your initial comments (prioritise bombers that are 800m away over bombs that are 10k away) does this.
Your patch as is is about identical in my eyes functionally. The button currently targets bombs in order of appearance? I guess? I always felt that it was closest bombs first already anyway. This could be coincidental observation due to the way I tend to play.

The multi stuff - if you followed the conversation from the start of the thread was a related off-note to your target attackers change.
Spoon;
You failed that basic part of reading comprehension too.

In reference to the lazy/problematic bomber change it effects FS SP as much as MP.
In reference to people who were good enough to play a certain way, adding a button which does a lot of that for you cuz you're not good enough to suss it yourself amongst your team = zzzz.

Yea, corkscrew/variations thereof but 100% evasion is more subtle than just that, since both throttle control and banking is required to keep the masters of MS off you (kinda going off topic but I can't resist cuz I like that stuff).

TvT bombing in multi is significantly less likely to be effected by this(your original aim) change since it only tends to be players bombing and in such a situation the bombs an bombers have equal priority and you tend to try to kill them in the same strafe even at the expense of your life; there's no real target exploration.

[karajorma]

QD, if you read the first post carefully you'll notice that although it might seem he was suggesting the patch would prioritise close bombers over far away bombs, the first half of his post definitely contradicts this. It's not the clearest language but let's not start accusing people of reading fails just yet.

If all the patch really does is change the order that bombs are targeted in (and only if there are no bombs in the mission anywhere, then change the order of bombers) I'm all for this. It is ridiculous for the bomb key to target bombs 8000m away if there are bombs 500m away.



However may I make a request please. There is a change I've been considering to the bomb code for a little while since it's important to Diaspora. (I'm actually glad I didn't make it since this code would make it obsolete!). Since you're working with that part of the code already I'd appreciate it if you look at the feasibility of the change I want.

Can we attach a priority to a certain kind of bomb in weapons.tbl and then use that to look through bombs of that priority level first? I'd like to be able to assign nuclear missiles a much higher priority than standard bombs and have the B key cycle though those first and only afterwards cycle through other bombs. Of course, this would have no effect in FS2 but would be very useful in mods. It would be on the modder to make sure he doesn't overly granulate the bomb list and end up right back where we were before this patch but being able to say "All nukes have a priority of 50, everything else is 0" would be immensely helpful to the player of a something like Diaspora.

[Spoon]

In reference to people who were good enough to play a certain way, adding a button which does a lot of that for you cuz you're not good enough to suss it yourself amongst your team = zzzz.

Hahahahaha. oh wow.
Are you seriously suggesting that: Streamlining a clunky interface equals removal of skill?


Edit: That's actually kind of a neat request by Karajorma