Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: Dan1 on February 20, 2006, 04:13:39 pm
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Alright, I was playing through some campaigns today and I got to thinking about the commands that I can give to my allies/wingmates.
The only thing I can think of off hand is that I wish I could tell one wing to attack another.
As an example, you have to defend a ship and have multiple wings incomming and say cancer is the bomber wing and capricorn is the fighter wing...instead of telling all your wingmates to defend the targeted ship or just tell a wing to attack a target (singular just attack all enemies.)
I wish there was a way to tell say beta to attack target WING not just target/ all hostiles while i'm busy dealing with other things.
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"Get outta my face stupid!" would be a good command.
No, seriously, I think it would be good if you could when ordering disarm, get another window thin which you choose what?
Such as:
1. Whatever is closest
2. Heavy weapons (those with huge flag)
3. Light weaponry (anti-fighter stuff)
It would be so much easier for mission planing too.. Insted of giving you bombers orders like "destroy turret01", "destroy turret02" etc.. when attaacking the sath, you would have a single order - destroy heavy weapons :D
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Good ideas, but need work - I for one do NOT want to be traversing 300-sub menus to order my guys around in the middle of a battle.
I find the system cumbersome enough as it is without adding extra commands!
I really preferred the way it was in X-Wing, TIE Fighter and XvT - Commands were all one-shot key combos and simple.
X-Wing Alliance made it more like FS2, but even worse, and dear god I hated that thing. I don't think I *ever* ordered my guys around in XWA because by the time I'd traversed all the menus the mission would be over! (Exaggeration, but only just ;))
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Good ideas, but need work - I for one do NOT want to be traversing 300-sub menus to order my guys around in the middle of a battle.
I find the system cumbersome enough as it is without adding extra commands!
I really preferred the way it was in X-Wing, TIE Fighter and XvT - Commands were all one-shot key combos and simple.
X-Wing Alliance made it more like FS2, but even worse, and dear god I hated that thing. I don't think I *ever* ordered my guys around in XWA because by the time I'd traversed all the menus the mission would be over! (Exaggeration, but only just ;))
We should really make FS's command system more like Operation Flashpoints.
"ALL MOVE TO BUSH ALL STAY ALERT ALL GO PRONE ALL HOLD FIRE 1 TARGET THIS 2 TARGET THAT--- **** **** ****"
Personally I haven't had too many problems with Fs2's commands. I rarely even thought of them, maybe because they managed to walk the fine line between too dumb and too sophisticated. And besides, wingmen are idiots anyways and propably start to hammer some blob turret instead of flak or AAAf.
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Your wing mates tend to attack whatever fires opon them, be it a ship or a fighter, that is how I see it anyway. :)
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Sometimes when I want to have my wingmen destroy the big cannons on a ship, and then they all go and stand there "dueling" with a AAA beam...it gets annoying, lol.
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hi,
mhh i think yes it need any commands more.
but i think its important not to add to many commandos, so that you not need 5 minutes to find the right commando *g*.
but i agree with the suggestion of dan1 with the "attack this wing" order and trashman's choise what weapons on a ship first attack.
my suggestion is to add a commando for "protect this wing".
maybe the same button like "attack this wing" but with AI, if it friendly there stand protect, if it hostile there stand attack.
if that possible.
and a another idea: a save inquiry for the depart, often i let all fighters depart becaus i hit 0 instead of 9 for attack all enemies :(.
so ala: are you sure that all fighters depart? hit enter or space, maybe.
Mehrpack
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Maybe I've been wrong the whole time but... I hotkey enemy wings to a key like F9 under the F3 submenu, hit their hotkey to select them all, and then tell alpha or beta to destroy them. Maybe the wingman AI is just magically doing what I want them to do with dumb luck, but I swear that they seem to engage who I want them to. I only have trouble with group-guarding of convoys. Wingmen never do that right.
If I could have one command for wingmen, it would be a hold/engage type of command. That way I could give the typical "destroy that capital ship" command, but make my stupid bomber wingmates hold off on shooting their bombs till I give the word, thereby keeping the bombs from getting shot down by flak cannons at 1800 meters. I do this now by telling bomber wings to cover me and then frantically telling them to destroy my target when I get the whole group to within about 800 meters of the capital ship.
On the other end of this command would be getting your idiot wingmates with the trebuchets to disarm your target while sitting next to you 4 km away instead of suicidally plunging through the flak to shoot a weak turret with interceptors.
Maybe making the COVER ME command toggled and persistant would do the trick. Then you could give an order to the effect of "Shoot that cruiser but stay in formation idiot."
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The only way I can see the massive number of commands we'd like to see, become available, would be to use the voice recognition thing. It would basically mean that if you aren't using voice recognition, you can't access the extra commands, and are restricted to the 0-9 we have already. One further command option that would be good for voice recognition, is the ability to give priorities. For example, you want Delta wing to engage enemy fighters, but its primary function is to guard a cruiser. You'd give a vocal command to Delta wing to guard the cruiser, and engage fighters. It would recognize that both are comands to the same wing, but that the first command has priority over the second. Not sure if its possible, but it would be useful. FREDding allows you to give multiple simultaneous orders to a wing, with differing priorities, so why not player orders?
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C (Communications)
3 (All fighters)
S (Stop dying)
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C (Communications)
3 (All fighters)
S (Stop dying)
We can only dream.
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[brannigan]
"Stop EXPLODING, you cowards!"
[/brannigan]
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Well "ignore my target" is now fixed, so it is now much more useful for this sort of thing. :)
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I can definitely see Voice Recognition being the key to adding more commands. Without it, I never used any orders to wings at all, really... it always took far too long for me to get the windows up and hit all the buttons to issue orders, so that by the time I was done, either I was dead, the thing I was protecting was dead, or my wing was dead. Frustrating. Prioritized orders would be cool.
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I got another one..not really a command as much as a functionality wish.
You know when you have 3 or more wings that you are going to be starting out with? It sucks that you can't see all of the wings loadouts :hopping:
Well I wish you could look at the loadout for every wing. Only being able to see Alpha, Beta, and Delta's while Gamma is the primary bomber wing is annoying. And it's even more annoying when Command's like "Sending Gamma to help take down this cruiser/destroyer" and you see them warp in with Ursa's and then fire lots of rockeyes. I'm just like..you've got to be kidding me.
So what I want is like a sidecroll selector for the different wings cause only being limited to seeing 3 (4 ? I don't remember what the max is on the ship select) sucks and would like to view them all.
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How about stop banging into that frickin' escort ship, for christs sake!! That especially to the Iceni helm.
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[brannigan]
"Stop EXPLODING, you cowards!"
[/brannigan]
LOL!!
Personally, I nver had too much trouble with those command windows....
Alltough, in big battles (Bearbaiting) it takes practice and planning to manage all those wings.
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About the turret/wing commands at the top:
What if it was like the " destroy my target" or "protect my target" command and so if you had 'cancer 3' targeted, the fighters would destroy cancer wing, or you could select the turret / subsystems you wanted destroyed... ya know, sometimes I just think the programmers got lazy.
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C (Communications)
3 (All fighters)
S (Stop dying)
or the very similar
C (Communications)
3 (All fighters)
T (The next idiot that shoots me in the back with mourning stars while I'm flying on a level bombing run and trying to get helios lock on the heavy flak cannon shooting at me is going to get inserted with the plasma cores when we get back to the mothership.)
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I got another one..not really a command as much as a functionality wish.
You know when you have 3 or more wings that you are going to be starting out with? It sucks that you can't see all of the wings loadouts :hopping:
Well I wish you could look at the loadout for every wing. Only being able to see Alpha, Beta, and Delta's while Gamma is the primary bomber wing is annoying. And it's even more annoying when Command's like "Sending Gamma to help take down this cruiser/destroyer" and you see them warp in with Ursa's and then fire lots of rockeyes. I'm just like..you've got to be kidding me.
So what I want is like a sidecroll selector for the different wings cause only being limited to seeing 3 (4 ? I don't remember what the max is on the ship select) sucks and would like to view them all.
The game was deliberately designed that way and I can think of a whole lot of FREDders who would hate to see this feature added. It would allow the player to use a whole bunch of exploits that would seriously damage mission balance.
Putting the bombers in Delta wing for instance is a common trick designed to prevent the player changing the lead ship of delta into a fighter and taking the bomber for himself. Which means that if the mission had been written to allow a certain ship to survive because the player couldn't kill it and delta didn't arrive in time then that wouldn't work anymore. The player could simply bomb the ship himself and throw out the entire mission or even campaign.
The only way to stop that would be to lock Delta and above but even that is problematic. Cause if the wings are locked what is the point in being able to view them?
Making it so that mission designers could choose to make a mission where all the ships can be seen or even rearmed is one thing but retroactively applying it to all existing missions is a huge mistake.
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I find that the only good command to give to the AI is "engage enemy", as that is the only one that keeps them alive long enough to make a difference.
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The game was deliberately designed that way and I can think of a whole lot of FREDders who would hate to see this feature added. It would allow the player to use a whole bunch of exploits that would seriously damage mission balance.
Putting the bombers in Delta wing for instance is a common trick designed to prevent the player changing the lead ship of delta into a fighter and taking the bomber for himself. Which means that if the mission had been written to allow a certain ship to survive because the player couldn't kill it and delta didn't arrive in time then that wouldn't work anymore. The player could simply bomb the ship himself and throw out the entire mission or even campaign.
The only way to stop that would be to lock Delta and above but even that is problematic. Cause if the wings are locked what is the point in being able to view them?
Making it so that mission designers could choose to make a mission where all the ships can be seen or even rearmed is one thing but retroactively applying it to all existing missions is a huge mistake.
I re-read your post about six times and I guess I don't understand since I'm not a Fredder.
I can already change myself into a bomber as long as it's in the list on the left, I can make every single wing a bomber already if the ships are in the side scroll selecter. Already if Delta is a bomber squadren I can select that ship and move it over any alpha ship and they swap. (This is if I understand you correctly by saying that changing squadren ship types will change the mission dymanics.) What i'm saying is that in 99% of anything off the top of my head I can do that already as long as I can either A) see the ship in the side selecter or B) see the ship I desire as part of another wing...... Beta all zues bombers and Alpha all hercs II's? I just swap us and now Alpha's the bomber squadren... I guess what I'm saying is that this is already the case in most campaigns I've played. (Unless it's like a mission where the wing is locked like you said but at that point it's moot cause it's locked and unchangeable.)
Besides like I said, it'd be great especially for some of those older campaigns where say gamma has rockeyes like I said.
EDIT ADD: I guess it doesn't really matter either way since it's not going to happen any time soon if ever :doubt:
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"Ramming speed" :lol:
*C'mon, do it !, brand-new Erinyes awaits you in the afterlife....*
On the more serious note, "Ignore target type", would be useful...
IE. Ignore Bombers/Fighters, was this already possible ?, can't remember.....
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I find that the only good command to give to the AI is "engage enemy", as that is the only one that keeps them alive long enough to make a difference.
I find that the AI often just stops flying and picks their nose when I tell them this one. I use "cover me" alot. Then I fly straight into a big formation of fighters and spray shots around a little bit. Al enemiesl then single-mindedly try to kill me while my wingmen rip them apart. It also keeps the wingmen from engaging flak canons. The only weakness is if this command is given and the ships are already in combat and not near you. They'll fly over while the enemy hoses them up the tailpipe.
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I got another one..not really a command as much as a functionality wish.
You know when you have 3 or more wings that you are going to be starting out with? It sucks that you can't see all of the wings loadouts :hopping:
Well I wish you could look at the loadout for every wing. Only being able to see Alpha, Beta, and Delta's while Gamma is the primary bomber wing is annoying. And it's even more annoying when Command's like "Sending Gamma to help take down this cruiser/destroyer" and you see them warp in with Ursa's and then fire lots of rockeyes. I'm just like..you've got to be kidding me.
So what I want is like a sidecroll selector for the different wings cause only being limited to seeing 3 (4 ? I don't remember what the max is on the ship select) sucks and would like to view them all.
The game was deliberately designed that way and I can think of a whole lot of FREDders who would hate to see this feature added. It would allow the player to use a whole bunch of exploits that would seriously damage mission balance.
Putting the bombers in Delta wing for instance is a common trick designed to prevent the player changing the lead ship of delta into a fighter and taking the bomber for himself. Which means that if the mission had been written to allow a certain ship to survive because the player couldn't kill it and delta didn't arrive in time then that wouldn't work anymore. The player could simply bomb the ship himself and throw out the entire mission or even campaign.
The only way to stop that would be to lock Delta and above but even that is problematic. Cause if the wings are locked what is the point in being able to view them?
Making it so that mission designers could choose to make a mission where all the ships can be seen or even rearmed is one thing but retroactively applying it to all existing missions is a huge mistake.
That had never occured to me when I was FREDding
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I re-read your post about six times and I guess I don't understand since I'm not a Fredder.
I'll try to explain it to you in simpler terms then :)
I can already change myself into a bomber as long as it's in the list on the left, I can make every single wing a bomber already if the ships are in the side scroll selecter.
Ah. But who do you think put the bomber in the scroller at the side? That's right it's the mission designer. Any time you play a mission you should only have access to the ships the mission designer thought were appropriate for the mission. If you have bombers available on the side scroller it's precisely because the mission designer thinks that it is appropriate to allow you to fly a bomber. If you play FS2 again you'll notice that in the vast majority of mission you do not have any bombers listed. This isn't an accident. It's a somewhat subtle piece of mission design. The mission designer is very subtly telling you that it is okay to fly a bomber in this mission even if you are assigned a fighter by default.
If the mission designer does not what you to fly a bomber in a mission that does have bombers he will do one of two things. He'll either put the bombers in beta or gamma wing and lock them (which means you can't alter their weaponary in the ships loadout, or he'll put them in some wing other than Alpha, Beta or Gamma where you can't see them at all. Either way the bomber will not appear in the ship choices at the side of the screen.
By doing this the mission designer has effectively prevented you from flying a bomber. Most FREDders I've seen actually prefer to put the bombers in Delta wing or another wing you can't even see if the player is not meant to have access to a bomber. If you replay FS2 you'll see that this is actually a lot more common than you might have noticed. It's certainly very common in user-created mission. I never lock Beta or Gamma wing if I can help it. If a ship appears in the loadout screen the player should be able to edit it unless there is a very good reason. I doubt I'm the only FREDder who feels that way somehow. It's certanly the way :v: used to prevent you from flying a bomber in several missions.
Now the problem is that if you allow Delta and other wings to appear in the loadout you will now be able to disregard this mechanism for preventing the player from flying a bomber.
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with what karajorma said, it would kind of ruin the suprise of a mission if the briefing said "Today's an easy one, scout the asteroid field and see if that old cargo depot is still usable." and when you looked, there were 10 bomber wings with full helios loadouts for the mission. It would kind of make the suprise of the 3 enemy destroyers jumping in go away.
Mission loadouts should be appropriate for the mission briefing, and the status of the wing alpha1 is assigned to. (I.E, "no you can't fly the aries on the interceptor mission against the broken down cruiser, you just got transferred to this wing at podunk station. I don't care what rumors you heard over the galactic news network about shivan doom fleets. Your pilots pay won't buy a new aries if you break it.")
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Ah. But who do you think put the bomber in the scroller at the side? That's right it's the mission designer. Any time you play a mission you should only have access to the ships the mission designer thought were appropriate for the mission. If you have bombers available on the side scroller it's precisely because the mission designer thinks that it is appropriate to allow you to fly a bomber. If you play FS2 again you'll notice that in the vast majority of mission you do not have any bombers listed. This isn't an accident. It's a somewhat subtle piece of mission design. The mission designer is very subtly telling you that it is okay to fly a bomber in this mission even if you are assigned a fighter by default.
If the mission designer does not what you to fly a bomber in a mission that does have bombers he will do one of two things. He'll either put the bombers in beta or gamma wing and lock them (which means you can't alter their weaponary in the ships loadout, or he'll put them in some wing other than Alpha, Beta or Gamma where you can't see them at all. Either way the bomber will not appear in the ship choices at the side of the screen.
By doing this the mission designer has effectively prevented you from flying a bomber. Most FREDders I've seen actually prefer to put the bombers in Delta wing or another wing you can't even see if the player is not meant to have access to a bomber. If you replay FS2 you'll see that this is actually a lot more common than you might have noticed. It's certainly very common in user-created mission. I never lock Beta or Gamma wing if I can help it. If a ship appears in the loadout screen the player should be able to edit it unless there is a very good reason. I doubt I'm the only FREDder who feels that way somehow. It's certanly the way :v: used to prevent you from flying a bomber in several missions.
Now the problem is that if you allow Delta and other wings to appear in the loadout you will now be able to disregard this mechanism for preventing the player from flying a bomber.
Everything you wrote was not lost on me (I guess the "exploit thing" was what I was not understanding,) I should've been more clear. But what I'm saying is that I dont' mind about bomber wings or changnig myself to a bomber etc, BUT it would be helpful if I KNOW that I am going in hot against a destroyer(OK guys let's we're going too kill it for sure this time) and if the 3 wings I see on the selector screen aren't bombers than it's the ones that I can't see that are (bombers.) And then Epsilon/ Gamma come in as bombers and they start firing rockeyes it just makes it that much more annoying.
Also as you progress through FS2 you have a choice of many different types of fighters/ bombers (which I believe is why you don't get all the choices in the original FS2 campaign right at the start, you have to earn it like bfobar meant.) But near the end you have a choice of many different bomber/fighter combos. Just having the options of many different fighters doesn't mean anything, (if I give you the option of a spoon or fork in the morning to eat your lunch that doesn't make anything because that event will happen in the future and you don't know what to expect so you base your decision on the best intel you have at the time) just like giving the option of a fighter or bomber before the mission doesn't mean anything. Unless you've played it before anything can happen, you might have capships incomming or you might have fries for lunch (meaning that neither the spoon/fork does any good unless you're like this one guy I know that eats his fries with a fork one at a time) For example:
Step 1) Mission breifing..: Unknown space, escort awacks, expect attack. (What does this really tell me about what to expect enemywise? nothing)
Step 2) Look at ship selector and see every ship in the game available in set of 5 or whatever standard is (This tellls me nothing ......just because I have many options this gives nothing away....now limiting options to say oh bombers and that's it will though)
Step 3) Choose weapons and hit start.
But like I said, I wish this thing existed but it probably won't.
And as far as balance goes, when I play a campaign if it's too easy I bump up the difficulty, very rarely do I beat something on "Very Hard"
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It's not supposed to tell you that much. Otherwise, why would you play the mission?
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What I wanna know is where are all those 60 fighter/bomber wings or so when they're under attack? They just lounging around going "eh alpha and beta can handle it back to poker night"
Seconded.
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It's not supposed to tell you that much. Otherwise, why would you play the mission?
Exactly, and providing more choices for ships and weapons won't change that in any way.
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"Do a U-Turn and fly in the opposite direction!!!!"
I would like to be able to order a cap-ship around, just for the fun of it.
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It's not supposed to tell you that much. Otherwise, why would you play the mission?
Exactly, and providing more choices for ships and weapons won't change that in any way.
I think your complaint is valid but is better solved by the original mission designer putting a better thought in to giving you an appropriate and believable loadout to start the mission with. Really when I go to the ship select wing, I think the only reason I should change anything is if I just really want to fly a specific ship or use a specific gun because I really like it. The mission should already have the most sensible setup in there for you.
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I would like to be able to order a cap-ship around, just for the fun of it.
It can be done. You have to create an objecttypes.tbl file and add the desired player orders to the class in question.
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Oooooh! Tell me more!
Oh, and I would like to spawn ships in-game as well. Any clues on that?
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"What commands you wish existed." = "**** off and Die!" (Which wouldent be too hard for the AI to do, as they love that one already!)
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Oooooh! Tell me more!
Most of the discussion was going on in THIS (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,37327.0.html) thread. The code itself is included in CVS right now, so I wouldn't suggest using any of the builds linked in that thread, but they do include base copies of shiptypes.tbl, so you have something to start with. However, shiptypes.tbl has now been renamed to objecttypes.tbl, so be sure to properly rename the file if you plan on using it. I suggest you review the thread carefully before trying to alter the properties.
Oh, and I would like to spawn ships in-game as well. Any clues on that?
Not exactly sure what you mean by this.
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Oh, and I would like to spawn ships in-game as well. Any clues on that?
Ship-create SEXP. Download the bigger bearbaiting mission I posted earlier on this thread and look at the first two events for an example of how to use it :)
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It's not supposed to tell you that much. Otherwise, why would you play the mission?
Exactly, and providing more choices for ships and weapons won't change that in any way.
But what it seems like you're suggesting is that you want to know more about the mission from the ships available to fly it in. So yes, it will change balance. You're saying, if I understand correctly from you're wording, that you want to be able to look at the selection list and see the types of ships present for your side, to know what you're going against. Which...yes, does change your knowledge of the mission before it occurs.
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Well a few Commands that I ever wanted...
1) Attack Fighters Only
2) Attack Bombers Only
3) Cover Wing
4) Cover Wing and ignore big attakers. (Just cover them from fighter and Bombers not Cruicers, etc)
5) Cover my target and ignore big attakers
6) Ignore any big target. (auto-ignore Cruicers, destroyers, etc)
7) Cover my target from asteroids.
8) Cover my target from Fighters only.
9) Cover my target from Bombers only.
10) Attack Wing (someone already say it)
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Who wants a command?
I want to taunt the enemies so they come to me... then DIE!
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"Engage enemy fighters but stay away from flak and AA beam cannon range" command would be nifty. :)
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heres mine for missions like playing judas SHIFT+ALT+J or something similar= I don't care if my jump drive is broken get me the **** out of here
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This is just a very quick, simple, request. You know how 'H' targets hostiles and alt-H continuously does so, and the same with M and alt-M for speed matching? Could we have the same for 'B', so that alt-B continuously targets nearest enemy bomber when you destroy a bomber, or even a fighter too?
It would pretty useful for the common "protect ships x,y, z from incoming bombers and fighters". I've noticed that I get rather annoyed when I'm flying around trying to keep bombers out of range of some poor Argo carrying thousands of civilians, and suddenly I noticed that the target I'm flying towards is a fighter. Then I have to press 'B' to look where to go next.
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heres mine for missions like playing judas SHIFT+ALT+J or something similar= I don't care if my jump drive is broken get me the **** out of here
Silver: it should make your ship explode after you push it 42 times
Aceofspades: I want that too...auto bomb actually. It should prioritize actual bombs and target them first, then the bombers themselves
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You probably already know this, but it wasn't obvious from your post. The current 'B' command does prioritize bombs over bombers. After bombers comes fighters. I'm not sure if after that it targets bigger enemies though.
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Some that would make them go after mission objectives. There are moments I don't really feel like scrolling through 28 turrets to find the rear beam I'm supposed to destroy. Also, it gets tiresome to order them time and again to attack that bomber wing that just reappeared. Then of course the "Don't fire your bombs from 1500 meters, then assault the destroyer with your lasers."
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The "go kamikaze" command :D.
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A command to tell your wingmates to attack a ceratin enemy wing wouldnt be bad.
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:wtf: :rolleyes: :doubt: there's got to be six or so posts here asking for the 'attack wing' command. I think the issue is understood now.
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What about a protect wing command, so that you can tell the space superiority wing to protect the bomber wings, to keep the interceptors off of all of them.
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:wtf: :rolleyes: :doubt: there's got to be six or so posts here asking for the 'attack wing' command. I think the issue is understood now.
I Didn't read the whole thread.
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Besides showing that an option is popular does increase the possibility that someone like me will look at it :)
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:wtf: :rolleyes: :doubt: there's got to be six or so posts here asking for the 'attack wing' command. I think the issue is understood now.
We've never been ones to let a dead horse rest without giving it one last good kick...
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Hard Light Productions: Bringing Necromancers Together.
Guilty as charged.
Sorry if you felt I was a bit harsh.
Also...
Oh, and I would like to spawn ships in-game as well. Any clues on that?
Ship-create SEXP. Download the bigger bearbaiting mission I posted earlier on this thread and look at the first two events for an example of how to use it :)
I think he meant an in-game command that spawns ships, just like the '~' + K cheat, for example, and you're talking about spawning in FRED.