Hard Light Productions Forums
Hosted Projects - FS2 Required => Blue Planet => Topic started by: General Battuta on June 18, 2015, 01:28:22 pm
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Hey guys! Things have been quiet lately. The Voice Acting Deathmarch ate up one of the sprints we usually use to push an act towards completion, so Act 4 is a still a while out. Act 1 and 2 voice acting only needs a few more hours of work, but I don't know when it'll happen.
I thought we could share some of our internal (spoiler-free) design documents. This is a brief written to identify and solve challenges in Making Bombers Fun. Feel free to crib the mechanics for your own mod!
For Act 4 we face the challenging task of making the Durga, Vajradhara, and Lapith (plus the Izra) all distinct, interesting, and fun. We face a few key challenges:
- Waiting for aspect lock while getting beaten around by flak is boring and frustrating.
- Afterburning to point blank to fire your bombs is dangerous and familiar. This is especially a big problem because the UEF bombers only get a few torpedoes, so all their eggs are in very few baskets.
- Getting killed by your own bomb shockwaves sucks.
- Our combat environment is fast and lethal. Bombers are slow. Their shields and HP are not adequate defenses - it just means you spend a few more seconds with you screen flashing red before you die.
To address these problems, to maybe create the first bombing experience in a FreeSpace campaign that's actually fun, here's what I've been thinking. Our fluff has always painted UEF bombers as supremely badass. Let's work with that.
Here are the core design principles I'm following: every bomber should have a core offensive experience and a defensive 'oh ****' button that the player can push to escape tough situations and feel resilient.
Lastly, all bombers should have quality-of-life upgrades to avoid frustrating player experience.
The Durga
The Durga is the UEF's rabid dog. The Vajradhara is a slugger that will make a fleet fight miserable, but the Durga is the ship that will kill your destroyers if you slip them out of position or try to (say) jump your whole fleet above Earth. To live up to this role, it needs to get in fast and strike with overwhelming power.
The Durga's offensive capabilities are provided by the Redeemer, gun banks, and its payload of torpedoes. This is fine. It's fun as hell to shoot things with Redeemers. I'd like to propose only a couple changes here:
The Redeemer should be able to damage shields. It's just too much fun to swat down enemy fighters with it. I think the core experience of the Durga is firing loads of Redeemers.
We should consider permitting the UEF torpedoes - Warhammer, Jackhammer, and Sledgehammer - to lock on much more quickly. We should also consider giving them defensive capabilities. I'm gonna give this its own section later on, but it's definitely applicable to the Durga, because waiting for aspect lock when you could be shooting Redeemers is lame, and the Durga pilot should never be forced to fly in a straight line waiting for lockon.
The Durga's defensive capabilities should be based, paradoxically, on aggression. In order to avoid overlapping with the Lapith, I'd suggest we treat the Lapith as a dive bomber and the Durga as a strike bomber. The Lapith has more sustainable speed and tactical range - it's constantly quick and agile. The Durga, however, can make itself really really mean - tough enough to suppress enemy defenses and press the attack.
So, here's what I'd push:
- The Durga should have a defensive burst capability. This should be the pilot's tool for surviving inside an enemy warship's defensive envelope. I'd suggest a limited set of non-renewable charges. Each one could provide a few seconds of massive gun, shield, and afterburner regen. This allows the pilot to survive, move, and attack.
- The Durga should absolutely spray countermeasures. We can SEXP or LUA this. It should pop flares in multiple directions every time the pilot launches a countermeasure.
- The Durga should be a natural fit for self-repair systems and ammo packs.
- The Durga should have an intrinsic resistance to shockwave damage.
The Vajradhara
The Vajradhara should be a pocket warship, the kind of weapons system that enters a fleet fight with the intent to maul cruisers. If the Deimos is the GTVA's T-80, then the Vajradhara should be the A-10: a weapons system wholly intended to shatter large numbers of enemy warships in the face of fierce resistance.
The Vajradhara's got the Vajra gun. In order to differentiate it from the Redeemer, which is a fairly long-ranged high-alpha weapon, the Vajra should be designed to get in close to a warship and just tear it up. By these calculations the life of Brahmā seems fantastic and interminable, but from the viewpoint of eternity it is as brief as a lightning flash. In the Causal Ocean there are innumerable Brahmās rising and disappearing like bubbles in the Atlantic. The rest of the Vajradhara's offensive gameplay should be built around feeling like a flying fortress. It should have powerful turrets, effective torpedoes, and gun pods.
The Vajradhara's defensive capabilities are a problem. It's slow. This means that if it gets into a trouble spot - tailed by multiple fighters, or, worse, inside overlapping flak envelopes - it's screwed. Players hate feeling helpless.
- The Vajradhara should have massive, customizable defensive assets: hardened shields that take reduced flak damage, for instance, and optional secondary-mount jammer pods that provide beam-protect.
- The Vajradhara should be intrinsically resistant to shockwaves. It should, perhaps, have intrinsic self-repair. Like the Durga, it should spray countermeasures everywhere.
- The Vajradhara's turrets should be gnarly, perhaps tied to gun energy level, and as a secondary option the player should be able to upgrade them further - perhaps upgunning them from Rapiers to Sidhes.
- The Vajradhara's oh-**** button should be the ability to disable all weapons to enter a turtle mode in which guns and shields regenerate rapidly.
- The Vajradhara should be able to mount gun pods in its secondary banks. These could fire Gattlers or maybe even Redeemers.
- As a spectacular defensive option, maybe we should let the Vajradhara death-blossom Slammers or a similar close-defense munition in multiple directions.
UEF Torpedoes
I'm going to leave the Lapith aside for now, since I think its role is probably clearer and easier to design.
The Jackhammer and Sledgehammer are not effective weapons right now. You get very few of them, and while they do a ton of damage, they're huge, slow, and easy to intercept. We need to sex them up. I have a few suggestions:
Extremely rapid lock time. Waiting for aspect lock sucks. Just let them snap to target. This wouldn't affect the AI, since it doesn't wait for aspect lock.
Defensive options. We could give both warhead types some hit points. Could we create decoys - the warhead bus opening to deploy the main munition and several decoys that'd race ahead? The warheads should also be speedy, though perhaps not too speedy.
Excellent seekers. They shouldn't be much bothered by GTVA capship flares, which are counters to Apocalypse spam and smaller anti-turret weapons.
UPDATE: The Sledgehammer has given birth to the Revelation, a standoff anti-destroyer weapon which attacks behind a huge screen of decoys! As a tradeoff, it can't target subsystems. The Jackhammer is experimenting with becoming the Jackhammer IIEC, with enhanced survivability and a couple decoys.
This is a relatively old brief, so a lot of it has changed during gameplay testing and iteration. But it's a cool example of the kind of work we're doing to make a traditionally pretty ****ty part of FreeSpace gameplay more fun.
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Thank you so very much. As an avid UEF supporter, I could only reassure myself that the GTVA could be beaten by our bombers. The UEF (Storywise at least) relies heavily on the Durga, but it really is a more effective Ursa. Big and deadly, but so slow they get destroyed by the weakest fighter. These changes should make the UEF bombers what they deserve to be, highly advanced, survivable capship killers that can reach the target and smash it with a large array of weapons. Apart from how nice it is to have UEF bombers actually do well in a story sense, most bomber missions are super boring and uninteractive. Usually designers have to skew the fighter combat so far in the favor of the player that there is nothing to do in the bomber, just charge the capship and fire some bombs. These modules you talked about should really let the player defend themselves from enemy fighters in fun interesting ways, while also giving the bombers a way to survive in a capship's AA pockets and do damage. I look forward to seeing these superbombers in action.
EDIT: After rereading the list, I (somehow) missed Vajs spamming automatic multidirectional slammers. The awesomeness level just went way way up
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Extremely rapid lock time. Waiting for aspect lock sucks. Just let them snap to target. This wouldn't affect the AI, since it doesn't wait for aspect lock.
Defensive options. We could give both warhead types some hit points. Could we create decoys - the warhead bus opening to deploy the main munition and several decoys that'd race ahead? The warheads should also be speedy, though perhaps not too speedy.
Excellent seekers. They shouldn't be much bothered by GTVA capship flares, which are counters to Apocalypse spam and smaller anti-turret weapons.
UPDATE: The Sledgehammer has given birth to the Revelation, a standoff anti-destroyer weapon which attacks behind a huge screen of decoys! As a tradeoff, it can't target subsystems. The Jackhammer is experimenting with becoming the Jackhammer IIEC, with enhanced survivability and a couple decoys.
I haven't played around enough with the UEF anti-cap ship primaries, so I can't speak as to their effectiveness. However, in a universe where (the GTVA at least) can send in a Maxim strike with Aurora bombers, the actual warheads have never been a particularly effective tool. I've often thought that fighter based anti-capital secondaries should have seeking and speed characteristics more similar to a Stiletto. Granted that capital ships have much better ECM than fighters, but they rarely move quickly enough that even dumb-fired weapons of moderate speed would miss. Long lock-on times only made it easier to kill the bomber without giving the bomber anything more than a very minor seeking advantage. Perhaps that was necessary for game balance reasons, but I think it is possible to do better, and make it make more sense within the context of the BP canon.
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Long lock times occur when the warhead needs to punch through defensive jamming to create an effective attack profile. It's less about physically hitting the target then about exploding in the right way when you do.
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Useful thoughts! About time someone shook up bombing in Freespace!
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Someone set up us part 4!!!!
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This sounds pretty cool, but how do you intend to balance the bombers so that they don't become superships and obsolete fighters? Heck, I already have this feeling regarding the Uriel+Slammers...
(also, maybe a minor nitpick, but the AI does wait for lock time, the catch is (IIRC) that it doesn't use the same HUD lock-triangle calculations which reward "staying on target", so the AI can manoeuvre however it likes and still lock in the base weapon lock time)
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UEF bombers are superships. They're expensive, short-duration, maintenance-hungry beasts designed to kill everything, once. They use the Federation's technological and economic advantages to the fullest.
But if the Federation (or, even, the Alliance) were to somehow liquidate all the resources put into making, say, Uhlans, and turn those resources into the equivalent strategic cost in Durgas + support infastructure, they would probably lose effectiveness on net, not gain it.
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Ah, of course, I keep forgetting the offscreen (for Freespace) costs of the UEF ships. I wonder how many spaceframes & techcrew they need to keep a single bomber in combat.
Still, just show how much of a TEV supporter I am; the WC Excalibur never provoked this sort of reaction from me :lol:
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You'll get to see next-step Alliance bomber doctrine a lot in act 4 too. They're moving suicide bomb truck duty over to drones using new long-range/high-speed munitions, commissioning their own superbombers, and doubling down on SSMs.
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STOP MAKING US SO HYPE FOR ACT 4 UNLESS YOU'RE READY TO RELEASE IT. :hopping: THAT'S AN ORDER, BY THE AUTHORITY OF ME.
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You'll get to see next-step Alliance bomber doctrine a lot in act 4 too. commissioning their own superbombers
I thought GTVA bomber doctrine was moving away from things like the Ursa and Boanerges?
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The UEF's ultimate plan isn't to beat back Steele with bombers. It's project Shambala.
What does that entail? SSM relativistic Fenris strikes.
Where's your God now, Steele?
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The Vajradhara's got the Vajra gun. In order to differentiate it from the Redeemer, which is a fairly long-ranged high-alpha weapon, the Vajra should be designed to get in close to a warship and just tear it up. By these calculations the life of Brahmā seems fantastic and interminable, but from the viewpoint of eternity it is as brief as a lightning flash. In the Causal Ocean there are innumerable Brahmās rising and disappearing like bubbles in the Atlantic. The rest of the Vajradhara's offensive gameplay should be built around feeling like a flying fortress. It should have powerful turrets, effective torpedoes, and gun pods.
whaa...?
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You'll get to see next-step Alliance bomber doctrine a lot in act 4 too. commissioning their own superbombers
I thought GTVA bomber doctrine was moving away from things like the Ursa and Boanerges?
Yes, because they're terrible. In the modern battlespace they're built to fail. Consider the Ursa!
Jobs: Get close to a target. Shoot lots of bombs at it. Hold off fighters with a turret and heavy shields. Drive away and jump home.
Problems: Slow, so it can't get close. Carries lots of bombs, but they are only useful up close against lightly defended targets. Clumsy, so it can't really hold off fighters. Isn't tough enough to survive long enough to fire all its bombs.
So you need a bomber that is either: fast, expendable, and doesn't require much escort to get close. Or a bomber that is slow, not expendable, can protect itself reasonably well, and doesn't need to get close. How do you achieve the latter?
You can give it a lot of turrets, which creates a zone of protection inside which it's not safe to dogfight. You can give it local SSMs and long-range primaries. You can equip it with defensive systems so it can bug out when threatened.
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I am liking the ideas here, particularly the 'Turtle mode' on the Vajradhara and how you're looking to give each their own 'spirit'. Am sympathetic that it'll likely make balancing the thing 100x harder so do respect the BP team for going for it. :yes:
I've always felt many spaceship games tend to be 'the next ship must be bigger and more dakka!' and there's rarely mentions of 'out of game' factors in the design (like logistics or maintenance) or how ships might evolve in ways other than brute strength (like reducing their cost or logistics demands, etc). I have liked in BP and it's canon how you've considered those in many ships and concepts, such as here your mentions of decoy-using torpedoes and the GTA's switching to drone pilots for bombers (am surprised in fact :v-old: didn't explore that idea themselves much).
Nice one, and thanks for the post too to let us know :).
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First thought is that these new generation bombers make sense even in the canon. Bomber missions are rare, the objectives are of utmost importance and so the bombers SHOULD be expensive, sophisticated and very effective. Obviously, it fits nicely with UEF's general spacecraft philosophy.
I was a huge fan of Act 3 and the tactical aspect of it's missions and Act 4 sounds very nice. Can't wait, what a tease. :)
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Why not rework the aspect lock-on completely?
Once the bomber has a lock, as long as he stays in a certain range to it's intended targe, it won't be removed.
So, fire the first salve, circle a little bit, turn towards the target and fire again.
The decoy thingy is a great idea, I actually proposed it for the Hydra :D
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I've never wanted to fly a bomber* as much as I do now.
Slammer death-blossom. What else needs to be said?
*Other than an Athena. But who uses that as a bomber anyway?
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Dunno if it would be a solution fit for a bomber, but the UEF seems to have a thing for swarm logic torpedos, why not launch all your ordnance at once, maybe as a multitarget too? =P It would go alongside the logic of get in, do a major hit, get out.
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One particular point that piqued my interest was the bomber ability to "spray counter measures" everywhere. This got me thinking of an old fighter game (the name escapes me) where there were two kinds of countermeasure. You either had a choice of using a flare or a chaff. A flare would usually be more successful.
In FS2 and all mods that I have seen to this date, all the countermeasures have been what I would describe as "flare based". I have not seen the equivalent of a chaff.
If a chaff is to be used on UEF bombers, I would ask if this could be confirmed and if possible, please provide a screeny of what it would look like ingame.
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Chaff is just a bundle of thin metal strips used to create false radar signatures. In real life, chaff is a countermeasure against radar-guided missiles, whereas flares work on heat-seeking missiles. In each case the goal is to create a false target that the missile thinks is more real than the actual aircraft.
FreeSpace countermeasures aren't really either — they're more like big floating transmitters that (I guess) spoof an entire fake spacecraft.
As you've seen in Act 3, we're moving towards countermeasures that look more like real-life flares, because they're a lot more visually striking. Standard CMs aren't very readable, and when you have warships spewing out two dozen countermeasures against an Apocalypse salvo, you want to know it.
You can get a good sense of what a big countermeasure spread looks like by booting up 'One Future' and hitting the 'countermeasure swarm' ability.
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One particular point that piqued my interest was the bomber ability to "spray counter measures" everywhere. This got me thinking of an old fighter game (the name escapes me) where there were two kinds of countermeasure. You either had a choice of using a flare or a chaff. A flare would usually be more successful.
In FS2 and all mods that I have seen to this date, all the countermeasures have been what I would describe as "flare based". I have not seen the equivalent of a chaff.
If a chaff is to be used on UEF bombers, I would ask if this could be confirmed and if possible, please provide a screeny of what it would look like ingame.
Was it Star Wars themed? Because this is exactly how X-Wing Alliance did it.
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Flares in Alliance actually pursued and attacked incoming missiles — or even spacecraft.
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No, I think it was more Olympus Has Fallen themed if I'm honest. I think it was that film where I'm thinking of something like a B-52 bomber spewing out flares. The game I'm referring to is VERY old... literally before the time of the A10 Thunderbolt Tank Killer game that was around the same time as the ORIGINAL Mechwarrior game. I'm talking early to mid nineties here (damn I feel old).
Edit:- I just realised that as per usual, I am not describing my thoughts too well (too much JD). The scene I had in my head was from Olympus Has Fallen which would look something like this...
But in terms of the different kinds of countermeasures, I was thinking of a very old fighter combat game! I hope this makes a bit more sense. :)
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Yes, because they're terrible. In the modern battlespace they're built to fail. Consider the Ursa!
Jobs: Get close to a target. Shoot lots of bombs at it. Hold off fighters with a turret and heavy shields. Drive away and jump home.
Problems: Slow, so it can't get close. Carries lots of bombs, but they are only useful up close against lightly defended targets. Clumsy, so it can't really hold off fighters. Isn't tough enough to survive long enough to fire all its bombs.
What's your opinion on the Boanerges?
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The multi lock thing is a good idea... target a turret or subsystem, wait for the lock, once you have it, move for the next target and so on.
Maybe give the capital ships a ECM feature to scramble the lock, so you can't simply target all major systems and fire at all of them at once. Plus, let's say you have... twelve boms, you have a lock on six targets, firing two boms at each... bombs are going to be shot down. Maybe the targeting mechanism tries to add more locks untill you fire... so, two locks, four bombs and you have eight remaining... dunno if this makes sense :D
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Yes, because they're terrible. In the modern battlespace they're built to fail. Consider the Ursa!
Jobs: Get close to a target. Shoot lots of bombs at it. Hold off fighters with a turret and heavy shields. Drive away and jump home.
Problems: Slow, so it can't get close. Carries lots of bombs, but they are only useful up close against lightly defended targets. Clumsy, so it can't really hold off fighters. Isn't tough enough to survive long enough to fire all its bombs.
What's your opinion on the Boanerges?
It's bad.
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As a random aside I will note that I also more or less fixed one of my great regrets about Delenda Est. It should be much more unlikely for the Katana to jump in before you're done with the Carthage air wing.
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Have I ever mentioned how you guys are pros? I'm not even complementing you, it's just an observation. I mean, are you using some form of Scrum?
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Bomber gameplay is still a WIP and continues to evolve.
However, I'll put this here as an example of basic bomber gameplay without the sexp or lua-triggered "abilities".
You'll also see how Sledgehammers and Jackhammers behave differently in flight.
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At first I'm like 'our invincible point defenses will handle this' but at 1:30 I'm like
(http://i.imgur.com/QqWvwKb.jpg)
Have I ever mentioned how you guys are pros? I'm not even complementing you, it's just an observation. I mean, are you using some form of Scrum?
Haha, I had to look this up, but I guess so! We sprint whenever there's a mission designer available to FRED for a few weeks. The rest of the team solves problems in the designer's way, creates new opportunities (I made some cool guns, here's a new ship, I found some music), and hammers on the mission to create work items for the designer.
It's pretty informal. The big thing is fast iteration with early testing, hanging out on IRC, and never ever waiting for assets. You FRED with what you've got. I guess the other big thing is being okay with failure. We made and then threw out a lot of ****, including a full campaign at one point.
When I was at Bungie I would've caused major personal injury to get a team as sharp as the BP crew. Back when we were at peak pace in the leadup to War in Heaven, we had a 24-hour work cycle where Darius and I would hand off our progress as we woke up/went to sleep. It was so much fun. My work PC was at Rian's place, and I spent so much time there that my roommates thought I'd left town and threw me out of my apartment.
We can't pull that kind of intensity any more, since we have kids and jobs and stuff, but so it goes.
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...but at 1:30 I'm like
Love at first sight.
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The hype is upsettingly real. Looking forward to the end product of the Voice Acting Death March though!
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Act 4 is a long way out, but I bet I can make some voice progress tonight. There are also other BP contingencies unfolding on side channels.
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rofl the ending to that video
rekt
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Act 4 is a long way out, but I bet I can make some voice progress tonight. There are also other BP contingencies unfolding on side channels.
I'm digging the design doc for the Bombers - Bomber missions always felt somewhat forced to me in the canon campaigns (I disliked the bombing missions against the NTF, and I *hated* the Sathanas beam kill mission (stupid bloody fragile Helios torps), so it's nice to see you taking a look at them not just from a how can we make this actually FUN but also how do we make you feel powerful and relevant in a world of heavy point defence and smart bomber interceptors, without making it so ridiculously OP that it breaks the game. (Ahh, balance, such a long, laborious process).
Replaying the WiH campaign just this week (including playing Ken at 1am in a dark room alone in the house, because who needs sleep) has me hyped, though the words "long way out" make me sad - but hopeful, too, because they aren't 'dead' or 'abandoned'. :)
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Hello gamers!
I've thought about bombing missions before and how they play out in FS2 and mods.
This is mostly a stream of conscience of ideas I've played around with in the past, likes and dislikes:
How do FS2 bomber missions differ from what we've seen in past, present, and future?
-In Catch 22 our protagonist is one of the few examples of a dedicated bomber turning around and making a second bomber run. For the uninitiated, it is a tactical bombing run where they miss and "hero" takes the bomber back not out of sense of duty but survival. To paraphrase, 'we go back and make sure we hit that bridge, or else we are forced to face the same obstacles again tomorrow night! Assholes!'
I feel a lot of FS2 has that 'let us linger and destroy' mentality, which just doesn't exist in strike craft since their inception. I would rule out ships like the Spooky and AC-130, purposely designed for linger and engage in support operations, those aren't bombers but deserve tip of the hat. A-10s might, but only with complete aerial superiority.
-One of the defining moments in sci-fi bombing runs, the Death Star 'Trench Run,' was completed by a fighter with a space-wizard pilot. This was a contingency for when everything else failed, but the more I detail, the more I digress. I think the one mission I've played is FS history that really captured that 'trench run' feeling: Wings of Dawn - the mission where you are escaping with the Cordi queen through an asteroid field. You are in a suped up fighter, oversized weapons firing from all directions, you just have to make through the grid of death. One of my favorite missions of all time out of all mods released to date, I think it most encapsulated the trench run, even if that wasn't the designers intent.
-The biggest FS2 bombing failure: High Noon. I think this is worth bringing up because not only is the mission boring, it's practically self playing and sloppy. I can concede that one reason the mission feels so lame now is because it has both the Juggernauts slugging it out and back in '99 it would have been resource intensive. I think the Sath defanging mission in AoA remedied much of what was wrong there.
-Diaspora and WCS both had great missions where you would return to base only to be scrambled to a new objective. With vanilla FS2, you lurk with your bombs while your wingmen 'whatever.' Both mods had a much more 'bomber feeling mode' where you release a payload or two, RTB, only to face new challenges. While a bomber with a depleted payload shouldn't be much of a threat to an enemy strike, both mods played on this really well. Even when secondaries run dry, an extra ship in the sky is worth two on the flight deck. Add a pinch of 'may have tactical missile left' and it was good.
-This leads me to the Custos-X which I get a vibe where current bomber design in BP is headed. Great mission. Innovation and controls off the scale. An intimidating amount of required microing. A definitive proof of concept built upon The Blade Itself. Are UEF bombers just going to feel like scaled back C-Xs? Or more automated?
Bombing can certainly be fun. The hold-lock-release formula can be great in small doses. My opinion is that bomb missions should not be repetitive in form or function, need excellent background excitement, and the occasional kick in the butt that you thought X, but we're gonna put Y here to keep the adrenaline flowing.
Good luck devs, eagerly awaiting the infamous cigar chomping Tev bug turned feature :cool:
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One of our earliest prototype missions, from way back before War in Heaven released, was a pretty baller bomb run on a Tev destroyer group. Your A-10 namecheck reminded me of it. The brief was simple: bull your way down the threat axis, blow up the corvettes in your way, and maul the destroyer.
The whole time you were out there, friendly fighters were constantly pouring in to keep enemy interceptors off you, but they wouldn't last too long. So there was a cool rhythm in which you could push up as your fighters won, duck back (or dogfight) as your fighters faltered, then push up again when reinforcements arrived. The ticking clock on the whole thing was your total supply of friendly air cover.
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One of our earliest prototype missions, from way back before War in Heaven released, was a pretty baller bomb run on a Tev destroyer group. Your A-10 namecheck reminded me of it. The brief was simple: bull your way down the threat axis, blow up the corvettes in your way, and maul the destroyer.
The way you describe it sounds almost like an alternative to the Delenda Est battleplan, with bombers taking the place of the Wargods' Frigates.
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I've always wondered why there aren't more dumbfire bombs. Yeah, reactive armor and all that, but a mission where you just strafe a shipyard or something with super-Tempests to cause as much damage as possible before reinforcements jump in would be all sorts of fun.
Slammer death-blossom. What else needs to be said?
"Friendly fire"
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I've always wondered why there aren't more dumbfire bombs. Yeah, reactive armor and all that, but a mission where you just strafe a shipyard or something with super-Tempests to cause as much damage as possible before reinforcements jump in would be all sorts of fun.
I was thinking about that too and wondering: why not have pre-programmed/pre-briefed or Lock-On-After-Launch bombs?
The former, I was probably thinking that since recon sensors would probably be able to identify the jamming suite on-board those ships, your targeting computer could already compensate and have a faster lock-on time.
Lock-On-After-Launch (I'm talking along the lines of AGM-114 Hellfire ripple firing), I'm trying to find some way to not make that tricky or broken, particularly if there's going to be a "tracking envelope." If it's a visual tracking envelope, that means the bomber would have to stay within the view of those targets, unless those bombers can laterally strafe. FS bombers were already barnhouses, but barnhouses with directional jets...
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Bomber gameplay is still a WIP and continues to evolve.
However, I'll put this here as an example of basic bomber gameplay without the sexp or lua-triggered "abilities".
You'll also see how Sledgehammers and Jackhammers behave differently in flight.
My face at around 1:30
(http://i1054.photobucket.com/albums/s490/kingspoon/Awesome_zpstpxvfdu8.jpg~original)
Them mirv's are glorious.
(Also that mission remains my favorite BP mission and one of my favorite missions overal)
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One of our earliest prototype missions, from way back before War in Heaven released, was a pretty baller bomb run on a Tev destroyer group. Your A-10 namecheck reminded me of it. The brief was simple: bull your way down the threat axis, blow up the corvettes in your way, and maul the destroyer.
The way you describe it sounds almost like an alternative to the Delenda Est battleplan, with bombers taking the place of the Wargods' Frigates.
Part of this screams to me the climax in the film adaptation of Ender's Game. I don't remember if it was much the same in the book, the Rackham tests seemed much more extensive. Still sounds like a really cool concept, especially with drones, but I can form an opinion on why you decided to not go that route, doesn't appear to me to fit the UEF strategic doctrine.
It also triggered another recollection, the first Soviet carrier assault in Red Storm Rising. Obsolete bombers [Badgers] launching drone missiles that read as more advanced bombers [Backfires] so that all of the interdiction forces were fooled into chasing the drones. I recall the NATO fleet being fooled, both the AEGIS (which just shut down from target overload) and alert fighters with spent fuel chasing ghosts. I know drones don't have much of a rich heritage in FS2 other than target practice, it is a happy thought that some mothballed Athenas would be a wonderful Badger. (Also sub-space missile strikes would make a great distraction for sneaking in the hard-hitters, not sure if that is TEV exclusive though.)
I see holes in that working in FreeSpace for various reasons, not limited to linear line of sight, distances fired on Earth (in said book) are greater than combat missions in FS, Moore's law, etc. However, I do feel the game under-utilizes stealth bombing, which even against human opponents (I'm letting my Allegiance experience get the better of me) can be so intense it's nerve rattling (in a good way).
That aside, to address another comment, the super-tempest anti-capship swarm is really, really really, for sure, hard to balance. The Maxim is beast enough. Pointing and holding click to make capships go boom really isn't lasting fun, (at that point just cheat to win) and defending against it is even worse, so I'm a stout supporter of having to sweat a little to make the bomb run instead of hiding in a crevice and holding down the trigger. Smart weapons of today still rely on the computing power linked to the delivery system itself. One thing I have pondered is a cruiser (or even smaller) sized dedicated missile boat saturating with anti matter rockets (think space MLRS) but the Narayana seems to fit the bill.
Anyways, I've used up my 3 lifelines in this post and I have no anime pic on hand to express emotion. I do enjoy this conversation however; regardless of how you feel about flying bombers, they are essential to FS2 gameplay.
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However, I do feel the game under-utilizes stealth bombing, which even against human opponents (I'm letting my Allegiance experience get the better of me) can be so intense it's nerve rattling (in a good way).
I believe there's a bit of fluff stating that the Fedayeen wanted to do just that--load up their stealth fighters with antimatter bombs, jump through the Gate, and unleash hell on Delta Serpentis--but the Elders told them no. I'd assume the possibility still exists for a mission.
That aside, to address another comment, the super-tempest anti-capship swarm is really, really really, for sure, hard to balance. The Maxim is beast enough. Pointing and holding click to make capships go boom really isn't lasting fun, (at that point just cheat to win) and defending against it is even worse, so I'm a stout supporter of having to sweat a little to make the bomb run instead of hiding in a crevice and holding down the trigger.
Most bombing in Freespace is already hiding in a crevice and holding down the trigger thanks to the narcolepsy-inducing lockon times. I think if you got rid of that, and did some clever scripting with fighters and point defense to encourage players to keep moving, you could have a really fun experience.
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I'm curious... with the HTL models showing more than one person in the cockpit of most bombers, capships being piloted, and a more fleet command and control role introduced in act 3, where does the community stand on 'railed' missions, as in, you aren't pointing the ship? I thought Windmills (http://"http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,62062.0.html") was quite brilliant.
Personally, I'm of the opinion that just turrenting would be kinda boring unless you got an exotic beam weapon, but the AI commands have really evolved in BP. Instead of speculating, I should be checking out Battle Captains (http://"http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=86706.0").
I apologize, I feel like my comments are all over the place.
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I would love to make your bomber backseater a gameplay mechanic, but I don't know if I'd go so far as to put the player in the backseat.
Got to play with a Vajradhara with prototype modal defenses today. Pretty simple ETS system — max out guns for berserk turrets, max out shields for rapid regeneration, max out engines for infinite burner supercruise. I'm hoping it doesn't add too much micro load. And it's a ton of fun to say I'M ****ING INVINCIBLE
(Senator Armstrong should be a backseater)
Right now the Vajra, the Vajradhara's main gun, is a low-ammo, short-range anti-warship primary that fires long rattling bursts. We're trying to make it feel like an anti-corvette A10. At another point we tried making it a smart missile primary that would fire a spray of turret-seeking anti-subsystem missiles followed by light bombs, but it just wasn't satisfying. Tech-wise, it'll probably fit right in with the rest of the heavy UEF fighter primaries, namely 'we put an antimatter on it'.
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I would love to make your bomber backseater a gameplay mechanic, but I don't know if I'd go so far as to put the player in the backseat.
Got to play with a Vajradhara with prototype modal defenses today. Pretty simple ETS system — max out guns for berserk turrets, max out shields for rapid regeneration, max out engines for infinite burner supercruise. I'm hoping it doesn't add too much micro load. And it's a ton of fun to say I'M ****ING INVINCIBLE
I got used to pumping energy levels around very quickly in WiH, because it felt necessary from the get go, so from my perspective, that wouldn't be too big to deal with.
a low-ammo, short-range anti-warship primary that fires long rattling bursts. We're trying to make it feel like an anti-corvette A10.
BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA RRRRRRRRRRRPPPPPPPP!!!!
(I really love the sound of the A-10's main gun, so if sounds even half as cool, I'll use the hell out of it).
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I would love to make your bomber backseater a gameplay mechanic, but I don't know if I'd go so far as to put the player in the backseat.
Got to play with a Vajradhara with prototype modal defenses today. Pretty simple ETS system — max out guns for berserk turrets, max out shields for rapid regeneration, max out engines for infinite burner supercruise. I'm hoping it doesn't add too much micro load. And it's a ton of fun to say I'M ****ING INVINCIBLE
I got used to pumping energy levels around very quickly in WiH, because it felt necessary from the get go, so from my perspective, that wouldn't be too big to deal with.
Voice recognition has commands for maxing/minning a specific ETS value (like "max engines", "min weapons", etc.); I've been thinking that those are useful enough that maybe they should be added as regular keys.
(Senator Armstrong should be a backseater)
If nobody else does it, I will ****ing make a mod mod that totally makes Senator Armstrong your copilot for bombing missions.
*player blows up a cruiser*
"NOBODY ****S WITH THIS SENATOR!"
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If nobody else does it, I will ****ing make a mod mod that totally makes Senator Armstrong your copilot for bombing missions.
*player blows up a cruiser*
"NOBODY ****S WITH THIS SENATOR!"
*launches torpedo*
"PLAYED COLLEGE 'BALL, YOU KNOW"
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"How did we survive tha-"
"NANOMACHINES, SON!"
(That guy freaked me out :lol:).
I quite like those ETS-linked abilities ideas and feel they'll be good; doubt it'd hassle players much especially in the Vajra, though might take a bit of getting used to if the change is made quite sudden and major (as in ship goes from snail to Sonic the hedgehog second you max ETS). Having them gradual buffs (like the turrets are in One Future) would work really well IMO. Like the direction you guys are going definitely :yes:.
I would love to make your bomber backseater a gameplay mechanic, but I don't know if I'd go so far as to put the player in the backseat.
Perhaps certain co-pilots could bring a certain buff of some kind? Like they make bombs lock-on quicker or managing ETS better? Or the ship has a special ability that represents the co-pilot doing something?). A player being co-pilot would probably be too boring for them in most FS missions though being co-pilot of a Vajra-style bomber and having 360 turrets would be fun (suddenly reminded of HW2 gunships).
One ability I did consider reading through this thread was a big torpedo where upon launch the camera switched and the player actually remote-guided the torpedo (and so could use an AB or dodge fire etc). Would mean of course the player's ship would be helpless while he did it so maybe a bad mechanic for most FS, though if the co-pilot thing was ever put in it would work with that quite well as they could do it while the pilot dodged fire.
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I would love to make your bomber backseater a gameplay mechanic, but I don't know if I'd go so far as to put the player in the backseat.
Perhaps certain co-pilots could bring a certain buff of some kind? Like they make bombs lock-on quicker or managing ETS better? Or the ship has a special ability that represents the co-pilot doing something?). A player being co-pilot would probably be too boring for them in most FS missions though being co-pilot of a Vajra-style bomber and having 360 turrets would be fun (suddenly reminded of HW2 gunships).
That actually sounds like a really neat gameplay mechanic that would add a bit more depth to flying twoseaters.
It also made me wonder about wingmen pilots having quirks that made them better at various things, gave different pilots different strengths, which would sorta make sense from an Act 4 perspective, where it seems like Noemi's going to be leading a full squadron of the Toutatis, so picking and chosing which pilot was suited to the mission requirements would be important (eg, some pilots have a bonus damage against turrets making them better at defanging corvettes, others are better at intercepting bombers/strike fighters and thus are excellent escorts, that sort of thing)..
Not even remotely sure if it's possible to implement things like that, or whether all wingmen have the same aptitudes as defined by the AI..
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That was going to be the flagship feature for Act 4 for a while, but I cut it after testing. I can go into why if people are curious, with the caveat that it's not coming back unless we test up something really compelling, and no amount of design posts are likely to change that!
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Hah, sure, I'll bite. I'm curious. Was it something that just didn't test well because you couldn't make the individual pilots unique enough to justify the extra effort it required to implement, or was it simply not big enough an impact on the gameplay?
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It's basically a problem of readability. It's fun to fight alongside wingmen, and it's fun to give them broad commands. But once you cross into micromanaging individuals, you're starting to pull the player away from the core gameplay loop and into MenuSpace.
And, conversely, players see the effect of wingmen actions, but not the actions themselves. It's very hard to say 'hey, Beta 3 has +10% burner time, and that made a difference!' You have to go for really big changes to get readability.
The closest I got to really liking it was managing wing leaders - 'Alpha gains +30% burner time' or something like that.
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What about changing it so that rather than a specific ability boost, each pilot had a preference for a specific fighter chassis, and subsequently performs somewhat better in that fighter. So those pilots who like to fly the Uriel tend to be better in them, and perhaps not as good in Kents, while speed jocks tend to stutter in the slower gunships/bombers, because they're used to the speed and maneuverability. (Noemi, as the player being tabula rasa, doesn't really need an effect..)
That way, you're only doing it at the start of a mission, and it's more a matter of optimizing your forces for a particular mission, and you don't have to micromanage them in mission - if you feel like you'll need a Gunship wing in a mission, you'll know which pilots to assign to that wing and the Uriel's, because it's what they sim in and are best at?
Edit: I know, I know, you said no amount of design posts are likely to change the decision, but I can't help myself. :lol:
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That doesn't do anything to give the player feedback, though. It's pretty hard to track what your wingmates are doing in FS; swapping out their fighters and loadout is probably the finest control over their abilities that's worth giving to the player.
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just as a question of curiosity at the cost of a possible derail, are you guys (still) planning on releasing acts 4 and 5 together? or is act 4 going to be flying solo?
i recall 3 and 4 were supposed to ship together but the team changed its mind after realizing how boring bombers are rofl. just couldn't recall if the plan was to make 4 and 5 a tag team release or not afterwards.
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The original plan was to do 3, 4, and 5 together, but 3 was such an insane amount of work (and so full of lore we desperately wanted to get out there for discussion) we decided to ship it solo. I'm not sure how we'll deliver 4! It probably won't make the voice acting release for acts 1 and 2.
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Think I'm going to have to see if I can produce an anti-matter bomb explosion. The last one I did in my sound pack was meant to be for something huge, but I'm thinking something more for the warheads themselves when they hit the target.
As for the balance issue of the bombers, I had an idea about that but I don't know if it is possible. But what about as the bomber payload decreases, the bomber sheds its defensive abilities for more dogfighting abilities. For example, fire a bomb and the armour threshold decreases, but speed and manouverability increase to compensate. This exchange of abilities would decrease and increase respectively and incremently as more torps/bombs are fired. Just an idea I'm throwing out there! :)
As for the idea of using a backseat turret, an example I can think of how it would work would be in X-wing Alliance where you could man the turrets on the Corellian YT series of freighters.
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That's something we've been talking about, but it's an incredibly annoying system to implement right now. FRED can't change a ship's tabled stats in useful ways right now, so you have to actually change the ship class, and it gets obnoxious from there.
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I have a VERY limited knowledge on programming, but could the tables use logic gates to implement the system?
For example, something along the lines of:-
IF bombs = [number] THEN turn rate = [number] AND armour = [number] AND speed = [number]
I can appreciate how annoying it would be as there still remains a potential balance problem of:-
1) What should the full payload stats be?
2) What should the depeleted payload stats be?
Then the actual coding itself.
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This is the kind of feature that requires code or script work.
It's also a pretty subtle feature — the kind of bonus you push for if you have production room, but not a tentpole.
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That's something we've been talking about, but it's an incredibly annoying system to implement right now. FRED can't change a ship's tabled stats in useful ways right now, so you have to actually change the ship class, and it gets obnoxious from there.
It would be a really neat feature if turn rate, acceleration and top-speed somehow could be bound to the ships actual payload. As an strategic element in the weapon selection screen (Shall I take a few more rockets or do I have to be fast?) or in mission (Get the payload as quickly as possible en route to be fast again).
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This is the kind of feature that requires code or script work.
It's also a pretty subtle feature — the kind of bonus you push for if you have production room, but not a tentpole.
Sounds like a challenge for Axem or Spoon or both! :D
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DahBlount is actually the one looking at it.
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The problem here is that the code assumes that ship classes are only created during the initial table parsing phase, and that they do not change once parsed.
Both of those assumptions have to be checked for and be corrected before we can talk about introducing sexp or scripting access to those values, which means a rethink of how we deal with ship classes in general.
Off the top of my head, I am not sure what the best solution would be. What I do know is that this is not an easy task.
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Believe it or not... that actually makes sense in my head!
The tables need to be active rather than passive. (bad analogy I know)
I'm just trying to think outside of the box here, but I would be guessing that you would be looking at something that has changeable integers. I'm presuming that "ingame re-parsing" selected tables would not be a workable solution as it could cause framerate drops, chop and generally just crashing.
I'm just thinking of a way round and it, but I'm sure as yous know already, I would presume that it would have to be a source code change.
As for a new ship class... what about calling it the "fighter bomber" class. Designation "UEFb"?
P.S. Ignore me if I am being stupid, I'm just throwing some ideas around. :nervous:
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You need to know how FSO organizes ship data. There are ships, and there are ship classes. Every ship has a reference to a ship class. Changing ship class values directly is an obviously non-working idea, since you would be changing the behaviour of every ship of a class in the mission at once.
This is the basic problem. Any reference to a changeable ship class value will have to be checked and code inserted to check the ship's status to evaluate what the class values should be.
Conceptually, this is relatively straightforward, but it does require a lot of work that then has to be double and triple checked.
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Yeah, that's why I was thinking an entirely new ship class, as it would only effect those in that class rather than one of the existing ones. Maybe it could be something that the SCP team could do as a new feature, rather than just the BP team, as it could allow the modellers to go nuts and perhaps inspire new things in new mods.
I can certainly appreciate the length of time it would take to implement but it would be a very cool addition to existing and future mods!
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Yeah, that's why I was thinking an entirely new ship class, as it would only effect those in that class rather than one of the existing ones. Maybe it could be something that the SCP team could do as a new feature, rather than just the BP team, as it could allow the modellers to go nuts and perhaps inspire new things in new mods.
Here's a fun fact for you. The code responsible to change a ship's class has had a higher density of bugs compared to linecount than almost any other piece of the engine. As a result, there are historical reasons why we're being careful around it.
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I thought as much because of the amount of variables involved. Glad to know it is being seriously considered though! :)
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It would be easier to introduce a "bombs slow down a ship" feature to the codebase than a "scripts can change ships' tabled stats" feature.
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It would be easier to introduce a "bombs slow down a ship" feature to the codebase than a "scripts can change ships' tabled stats" feature.
In essence work backwards from the empty (and therefore fastest and most agile mode) to full (most speed/maneuverability penalties) as the number of bombs currently on board increases?
But then you'd have to somehow insert a trigger so that each time a torp was fired by the bomber, the game would recheck how many are left and recalculate the penalties it's applying to the craft, and we're assuming that it won't just do this for the players ship..
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That's a pretty trivial computation compared to something like collision detection, I suspect.
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Yeah, it's a tiny addition on top of all the other **** the game does whenever you fire a torpedo.
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Yeah, it's a tiny addition on top of all the other **** the game does whenever you fire a torpedo.
Pretty much this.
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I'd be vaguely surprised if it needed to recalculate entirely anyways.
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I'd be vaguely surprised if it needed to recalculate entirely anyways.
I imagine that it would be a fairly simple procedure.
If bomb released....
>> Recalculate speed.
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Yeah, I just meant it probably wouldn't need to tally up all of the torpedoes again every time. That being said, you could probably get away with doing that every frame just fine as implied above. Its not like we are trying to simulate thousands of bombers or something.
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Yeah, I just meant it probably wouldn't need to tally up all of the torpedoes again every time. That being said, you could probably get away with doing that every frame just fine as implied above. Its not like we are trying to simulate thousands of bombers or something.
Whoops my bad. The Internet is horrible at communicating non-verbals. I think its possible to check every frame, but why do an inefficient operation that would consume unnecessary cycles when it can be done more efficiently :P
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It would need to recalculate for each ship of that class that would be effected, not just the player.
So say you have a few wings worth of bombers jump in and they release the bombs simultaneously, how would 8 ship recalculations impact gameplay? I'm talking things such as chop and lag.
I think this still circles back round to ship class, as you don't want that sub-routine to effect the other ships in that class.
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Yeah, it's a tiny addition on top of all the other **** the game does whenever you fire a torpedo.
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It would need to recalculate for each ship of that class that would be effected, not just the player.
So say you have a few wings worth of bombers jump in and they release the bombs simultaneously, how would 8 ship recalculations impact gameplay? I'm talking things such as chop and lag.
It's a very basic calculation. You just need to do it 8 times, which a drop of water in the ocean of processing the engine performs.
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I have both sets of UEF and GTA Bombers in a mod file and I use both sets of bombs/torpedoes. Generally, I make the torpedoes travel faster than the bombs, but the bombs have a higher payload. Allow for more Torpedo Ammo, decrease lock time, increase rate of travel, but possibly make them do less damage. it kind of balances out IMO
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Something I've always wanted to see in FS is more strategic-ish 'bombing runs', as in, fly parallel to your target's surface and launch bombs onto it. Once you've made it close in to your target, why should you have to launch a miserable two bombs, turn around and head back out, only to start all over again?
Since a picture is worth a thousand words...
(http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20111223065637/starwars/images/9/9e/Bombing_Run.jpg)
By these calculations the life of Brahmā seems fantastic and interminable, but from the viewpoint of eternity it is as brief as a lightning flash. In the Causal Ocean there are innumerable Brahmās rising and disappearing like bubbles in the Atlantic.
:eek2:
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Umh, I have one question - if bombers can deploy decoy missiles to screen their torpedos then why UEF warships, like Karuna or Sanctus don't use decoys for their torpedos too? peace time cost savings? This would dramatically increase the effectivnes of their torpedo salvos to the point that they could be at least a match to Tev beams.
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Torps are already a decent (if asymmetric) match for Capella-era beams.
The Hydra torpedo already uses a multiple warhead to get some of the same effect. In general, there are so many Apocalypses already in store (and UEF logistics are so badly overtaxed) that new, expensive missiles are going to be spread pretty thin.
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Now that we are going to see some bombers get a power boost, will the AI Durgas throughout WiH get buffed, and will the Vajradhara's destruction in Icarus changed?
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In general, there are so many Apocalypses already in store (and UEF logistics are so badly overtaxed) that new, expensive missiles are going to be spread pretty thin.
Isn't this another reason to try to cover your expensive missile with lots of cheap decoys to maximize the chance of successful delivery to the target?
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Couldn't the bombs be very very fast, more or less like Stilettos? New Tev warships are suppossed to have better PDS, so it would balance.
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I think he was implying that decoy sub-munitions would be expensive to produce, if you wanted to make something that the enemy couldn't easily distinguish from the real thing.
The point is debatable really, its all dependent on how clearly the GTVA can see the missiles. How many small details need to be mimicked? Is it enough to just be a lump of metal flying in formation with the real deal, or do you have to do things like replicate the apocalypse's physical appearance and engine signature? Heck, they might even need to put a fake warhead and sensor system in. (whatever it is they do to hit the weak points in armor, if anyone happens to remember that explanation for slow bomb lock time)
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In general, there are so many Apocalypses already in store (and UEF logistics are so badly overtaxed) that new, expensive missiles are going to be spread pretty thin.
Isn't this another reason to try to cover your expensive missile with lots of cheap decoys to maximize the chance of successful delivery to the target?
You can't just strap decoys to an Apocalypse. It still needs to fit in the same launchers. Having a decoy-equipped torpedo would mean designing a new one, and size constraints mean that, even if you just modify the Apocalypse, you'd need to make significant cuts to either fuel load or warhead size.
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And more importantly you'd need a factory to do the refits and transports to move the decoy missiles around and the UEF just do not have the capacity to do that right now. What they do have is ****loads of Apocalypses that they've already paid for, so simply flinging more of them at the enemy is a pretty great strategy.
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I always felt Freespace 2 lacked a clear differentiation between bomb behaviour and function. I always felt there should be a clear difference in bombs:
PENETRATORS
These bombs penetrate thick armour. This allows them to do massive damage to major subsystems by tearing right through them, but the damage is fairly centred with a narrow blast radius, meaning this bomb is not ideally suited for taking out turret subsystems. Smaller vessels may even find an exit hole on the other side of their hull, caused by the blast itself.
- Average hitpoint damage.
- Massive subsystem damage.
- Small blast radius.
- Single projectile.
SCRUBBERS
These bombs explode on the surface, probably fired in a salvo. The damage to the hull is limited, but its wide spread blast will damage many turrets on the surface. These bombs are used similar to carpet bombing and will scatter to hit a large surface area. Ideally suited to knock smaller turrets off large capital ships, or to overwhelm smaller cruisers by blasting away on their hull in large numbers.
- Little hitpoint damage.
- Average subsystem damage.
- Massive blast radius.
- Mostly fired in salvos.
[/list]
BUSTERS
These bombs are meant to penetrate the upper layer of capital ship armour, blasting away inside the hull. Similar to a bunker buster, this bomb slams into the ship, before exploding inside, doing a lot of internal damage while blowing away large chunks of hull. While not as merciless to subsystems as a penetrator, it's ideal for taking down large, heavy hulls. Smaller cruisers may literally break in two upon impact.
- Massive hitpoint damage.
- Little subsystem damage.
- Average blast radius.
- Fired as a single projectile, or in small salvos.
As for bomber designs, I always wondered if the GTVA would build a bomber based upon the SF Seraphim design. It's long 'arms' would allow it to carry bombs in sequence, making for a far shorter reload time since bombs can reloaded/chambered far more quickly.
I'll reply on the UEF bomber designs at a later time.
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As a random aside I will note that I also more or less fixed one of my great regrets about Delenda Est. It should be much more unlikely for the Katana to jump in before you're done with the Carthage air wing.
I'm not sure I follow. Do you mean this from a story-perspective, or a mission/game-design perspective, or what?
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Personally, I think the greatest regret should have been the fact that you don't get to call in Mr. Sathanas as reinforcements, like with Aristea. Because for warships, nothing sucks more than a Sathanas shock-jumping your ass out of nowhere. That, and a surprise Sathanas is practically a canon-enforced meme. (I kid, I kid)
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A few things that could spice up bombing runs -
A dumbfire mass of armor and payload, a true hit-or-miss projectile that either doesnt have any propulsion or only fires its (large) propulsion package right before impact to burrow deeper. The pros being that this warhead could reasonably do a lot of damage and be untargetable (ECM if need be to make it plausible). It could either be designed as a subsystem disruptor - something that embeds itself into the hull and then activates and broadcasts TAG to help guide in artillery or does the opposite -- Jams the ability of the impacted ship to scramble targeting. Or the warhead could just be a big bomb. Either way, this option could ignore the hassle of effective range and targeting, so long as you can guesstimate a clear shot. This could be a choice weapon of the dive bomber.
(A warhead designed this simply could probably be adapted to one or more torpedo/bomb bays found on UEF fighters. Its essentially a single payload package, wrapped in something dense for penetration, optionally with a thruster.)
Mines - a blossom deployment (5 mines perhaps per salvo, spread out) of countermeasure sized bombs. Slip in on a slow or stationary capship, pop a few volleys in front of the hangar-bay, and bounce out. If the capship moves, it'll probably just eat the mines with its hull. If it doesn't, then the next wave of fighters or so out of the hangar are in for some rude ****.
-Give them slight propulsion/guidance and have them auto-lock onto the nearest enemy fighter. This makes them useful for shaking anyone on your tail in addition to the above.
- Give them the ability to retain their momentum? Park-and-pop for stationary mines, or just dump them in an afterburner-fed spin-dive toward the enemy capship and fighter screen. Plenty will hit something (depending on how far out you wanna try releasing your swarm)
Otherwise perhaps refine some form of TAG/ECM or other gimmicky weapon for the UEF. Perhaps the UEF could sacrifice a few mothballed ships (I cant find it now but its a small red one with a gravity drive, the predecessor to the Naraynas and Karunas.) as Drone-piloted or Nav-slaved Kamikaze ships similar in function and deployment to the GTVA's AWACS guided subspace missile strikes. That could serve as a nasty surprise to the GTVA warship push on Earth, if only accurate targeting and positioning could be delivered. Especially if the small UEF capships used for this stunt were already cruising at a good speed when they entered/exited subspace. (to minimize interception) I recall a few GTA warships in FS1&2 exiting subspace at dangerous speeds. Seems like a viable unplayed card, if the UEF could manage to kamikaze those mothballed ships without losing any crew in the process.
Lastly, perhaps using the stealth fighter for some bombing runs. We had some neat options for filling this role loosely in Act 3, but since the stealth has very limited secondary space it would need to be a fancy weapon that does something other than straight damage.
Or perhaps the Feydayeen have a stealth bomber.
TL;DR
Gimmick weapons are fun, consider inertial-based dive bomb weaponry, or Mines, or a combination of the two.
Consider a one shot weapon for use in a mission to deliver a clutch move at a critical moment. The weapon itself is insignificant, but what it enables the whole UEF defense to do is huge. The main invasion is brewing, and the UEF needs an ace in the hole (besides the ones we're aware of like defecting ships)
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Here's my recommendations and thoughts on bombers!
Gameplay aspects:
The biggest problem about flying a bomber from a gameplay point of view is that if the player is caught, he's dead. And there's really nothing he can do about it. This leads to a mission design that must be extremely lenient in how the player is attacked, or have a very scripted way for the player to perform the mission in order to not die. Because of that I would recommend giving the player some "Cooldowns" to spice gameplay up a bit and give the mission designers some freedom.
# Massive afterburner acceleration and top speed.
The player has the option to use a special afterburner that allows for 500-600m/s speeds that effectibly allow you to escape fights. X uses per mission
# Shield overload
Every 2 minutes you have the option to overload your shield generation by something like 200-300% for around 10-15s to put serious damage on an enemy that needs to go down fast
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Shift the focus from bombs to guns for anything below destroyer killing:
Flying a bomber (specially the heavier ones) should feel like
https://youtu.be/XZ-EOg38t1o?t=47s
- When the player is facing something that thing is dying... fast. Guns should do absurd amounts of hull damage. This also relates to mission design, see next section.
- Guided ordinance should be the exception, not the norm against capital ships. Missiles are great, but from a gameplay perspective... boring, wait for targeting solution, press button, turn around, light cigarette. Pat each other in the back and yell GOT EM. I'm of the opinion that the dumber the missile, the larger the damage should be.
- Salvo fire rockets over 5-10 seconds depending on desired balance constrains that requires bombing runs to not waste ordinance but are deadly when properly executed.
With that said, not all missions have to be about killing capital ships. The lighter bomber variants could be tasked with other goals such as sentry deployment or mine laying while carrying extremely long range fighter supression weapons to repel incoming reinforcements from intra system gates while still being able to tear cruisers appart.
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The buddy system:
Engaging a bomber from the front should be suicide for an enemy fighter. The bomber / fighter relationship should feel like a team working together. Bomber pilots should be encouraged to taking part in preventing a frontal volley from interceptors. And instead force a pincer move by the enemy which in turn should be handled by its fighter escorts. If the bomber is not attacking its intended target, namely capital ships, there should be a penalty in the mission design, but at the same time the bomber should try its hardest to avoid its escorts having to get too far ahead of them and help clear a path.
This type of interaction should be constantly reminded to the player through dialogue and consistant pilot escorts, it's much nicer when Jimmy the Ace has your back instead of Epsilon 4! It's a lot more fun when the AI fails misserably.
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Reward factor:
With all that said the bomber experience is greatly enhanced not only by the ship, but also by the design of the mission itself. The player needs to be useful in taking down challenges that fighters have trouble with. And those right now are basically.... cruisers?
- Add more and stronger sentry guns.
- Mine fields, which only bombers can detect or cost effectibly kill at long range.
- Missions that have multiple engagements (avoid fighters while killing a cruiser, jump somewhere else, clean a a minefield for another group of bombers that needs to do a run on a corvette. Bombers are, from the BP lore a very scarse asset and should work like surgical strikes, going in and out as needed. This helps create a sense of urgency and gives meaning to every action the player takes.
- Keep the player updated through dialogue of how things evolve after his actions in previous engagements. This is very reinforcing if coupled with events that track how well the previous engagement went and makes small changes on the next one.
- Raid a supply depot / facility before reinforcements arrive with massive firepower that would otherwise require several fighter wings.
- Hit and run missions where your goal is to take out as many important subsystems in the shortest amount of time possible by smart use of gliding against awkwardly placed ships undergoing repairs before a group of fighter escorts acting as a decoy gets killed. (This would fit really well imho with the "Steele attack heart in xx days theme")
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Making it look cool: This might be unrealistic but would greatly enhance the experience.
When you are not constantly trying to get a lock on an enemy fighter the pace of the game slows down considerably which exposes some of the uglier parts of the game a lot more.
- Areas on ships hit by bomber weapons could look more damaged, on fire or have some indication that the player accomplished something other than lowering the hull by 5%. It doesn't have to be something like the BP frigates that start losing chunks of ship in certain areas as that is not feasible on every ship, but rather better decals of damage on the ships themselves.
- Shooting a bunch of dumbfire rockets should generate some pretty big explosions, not just a tiny flash and a shockwave. Multiple colors for different weapons should also help with giving each weapon a distinct look.
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A thought I just had from pondering the differences between the Elite and Freespace combat experiences; what if the skill in playing a bomber on a bombing run were introduced by the ability to avoid fire with lateral movement? That is not just moving forward and pulling up or down to change the direction of travel but using thrusters to jink left/right and up/down while the stick keeps the nose of the craft pointed at the target so locks and any other targeting processes can occur. As long as there's some way to anticipate incoming fire to a degree then there's skill involved in avoiding it. Jinking when you see beam flash on the right emitters that can be brought to bear on your craft, seeing and moving away from inbound flak projectiles before they reach range and explode, that sort of thing.
Revolutionarily the ability of the bomber to dodge would no longer be linked to forward movement. Bombers wouldn't need to close any more than maximum weapons range if they felt they could accept the risk of torpedoes being destroyed in flight.
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You need to know how FSO organizes ship data. There are ships, and there are ship classes. Every ship has a reference to a ship class. Changing ship class values directly is an obviously non-working idea, since you would be changing the behaviour of every ship of a class in the mission at once.
This is the basic problem. Any reference to a changeable ship class value will have to be checked and code inserted to check the ship's status to evaluate what the class values should be.
Not a modder, am a computer scientist, had an idea for a workaround. If there's a way to seamlessly swap out one ship for another ship of a different class (I don't know) then it can be done in the manner of a finite state machine. Want a bomber with 6 torps that gets faster as each one is fired, then you make 6 bomber ship classes that are exact copies except for the speed being tweaked, then put the player or AI bomber pilot in what's technically a ship of a different class each time they fire but looks and feels the same, copying over the ship's state data like speed, direction, damage, ammunition, etc.
Apologies in advance for speaking about all this from a position of ignorance on the capabilities of the modding tools.
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But in terms of the different kinds of countermeasures, I was thinking of a very old fighter combat game! I hope this makes a bit more sense. :)
Microprose's F-15 Strike Eagle on my Atari 800 (mid to late 80s) had chaff for countering radar-guided missiles and flares for heatseekers. IIRC, you could tell the difference by the lock-on tones.
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You need to know how FSO organizes ship data. There are ships, and there are ship classes. Every ship has a reference to a ship class. Changing ship class values directly is an obviously non-working idea, since you would be changing the behaviour of every ship of a class in the mission at once.
This is the basic problem. Any reference to a changeable ship class value will have to be checked and code inserted to check the ship's status to evaluate what the class values should be.
Not a modder, am a computer scientist, had an idea for a workaround. If there's a way to seamlessly swap out one ship for another ship of a different class (I don't know) then it can be done in the manner of a finite state machine. Want a bomber with 6 torps that gets faster as each one is fired, then you make 6 bomber ship classes that are exact copies except for the speed being tweaked, then put the player or AI bomber pilot in what's technically a ship of a different class each time they fire but looks and feels the same, copying over the ship's state data like speed, direction, damage, ammunition, etc.
Apologies in advance for speaking about all this from a position of ignorance on the capabilities of the modding tools.
No, that's entirely possible (that's the sort of thing the change-ship-class (http://hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/SCP_SEXPs#change-ship-class) SEXP is for); the problem is that there is an upper limit to how many total ship classes you can have, and I don't know how close to that limit BP is, but it would probably go over it if they tried to implement this system for every player-flyable bomber.
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If you wanted this capability in the engine the best way to go about it would probably be to add a list of properties to each individual ship that shadow whatever's in the ship class.
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If you wanted this capability in the engine the best way to go about it would probably be to add a list of properties to each individual ship that shadow whatever's in the ship class.
This is bascially done on an ad-hoc basis for every ship-specific override available in FRED (special hitpoints/explosion data, for instance).