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Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Topic started by: Ryu Gemini on April 26, 2011, 05:49:57 pm

Title: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: Ryu Gemini on April 26, 2011, 05:49:57 pm
One thing that always struck me about FS2, aside from awesomeness of course, was how sluggish even the fastest fighters sometimes seem.  150 m/s translates to what, 500 or so kilometers per hour?  In your typical flight combat sim, arcade or otherwise, even slower aircraft easily break 700. 

Before I begin, I will say that I understand why its a good idea for FreeSpace 2 (as it originally stands) to have comparitively slow fighters.  When fighters with high speed are combined with high mobility, acceleration, and an AI that enjoys randomly messing around with all these variables to try and avoid getting hit, you find that it is a complete pain in the butt to actually hit fighter-sized things if they don't want you to hit them.  But considering some of the things the FS2 Open project makes possible, it should in theory be possible to negate this problem via one of a few methods. 


1.  Automated aim.  If you have played the Wings of Dawn campaign, the "Promethius Frame" had this applied to its blasters (they automatically aimed at the enemy's reticle, but don't alter their course after being fired).  Suffice to say, this particular craft had a rather large "auto-aim zone," and to remain a challenge you would probably want to limit it to, say, the very middle 10% of the screen. 

2.  Slightly spreading overly powerful and rapid-firing guns.  That is to say, like those in Ace Combat or other modern flight sims.  If you have played them, you know how few bullets it actually takes to tear apart an enemy aircraft.  Putting a similar system in effect for fighter weapons here would allow higher speeds to be viable here to some extent as well.  This of course has problems though, as FS2 AI tends to be pretty good at aiming where it needs to in order to hit something, so AI will generally tear apart players too easily unless they are modified to be at least slightly "bad at aiming" their primary weapons.  Some balancing would need to be done with capital ship health and weaponry power too. 

3.  Slower turn and acceleration speeds for the now-faster fighters.  If your turn rate is decreased, and you can't speed up or slow down as quickly as before, then you will be easier to hit.  Likewise, it is easier to aim your own fighter's guns at the enemy if both of you are turning more slowly.  Honestly, the fastest turning FS2 fighters turn at speeds over twice that of even the fastest turning modern fighters. 


Anyway, just some thoughts on the matter.  It wouldn't necessarily be a purely cosmetic change either, but could allow for new tactics to become viable in combat (for instance, actually strafing capital ships with fly-bys instead of just standing back and "sniping" them, or dashing in, launching torpedoes/missiles, doing a 180 and getting away from their guns).  One thing I notice is how close-strafing runs against capital ships, with all their new beauty and potentially cinematic "trench run" moments given to them by all our model designers, are really not a very smart thing to do in Freespace because fighters are so slow that the ship's defensive turrets will pound away at you the entire time.

I am not saying that Freespace should become Ace Combat or something (though I would like to see someone figure out how to allow you to aspect-lock 4 enemies at once sometime), but it would be interesting to try working with high speed concepts after all the time we have spent perfecting the use of the original FS2 style of gameplay, and FS2 Open has the capability to do so without making it a total pain like it would be with the original FS2 engine.  Plus, we would likely hear far fewer complaints about overly long node runs in missions if we had fighters capable of 400m/s (on that note, capital ships could be allowed to move at 50-200 m/s themselves, opening up the possibility of blitzkrieg/breakthrough tactics and missions, and simply being able to have player-controlled capital ships that can be fun to maneuver around). 


Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: General Battuta on April 26, 2011, 05:54:48 pm
A lot of up-and-coming mods have been playing with this - SAFSO has fast glide-heavy combat with a lot of autoaim, FotG is doing something similar but I think without glide. Beyond the Red Line of course did it first in its blockbuster demo. Droid's FreeSpace Quest has super fast capships as well and should be awesome.

The Fury AI from Blue Planet 2 (and parallel developed AI in WoD and FotG and Diaspora) really helps make this kind of combat work better.
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: Herra Tohtori on April 26, 2011, 05:58:18 pm
Reduce accelerations and make it so that ships turn faster at lower speed. This would mean that in straight line, ships could go pretty fast, but getting them up to maximum speed would take significant time, and to maneuver effectively you would be required to reduce speed...

Energy bleed while maneuvering could be considered for gameplay reasons - even though in flight sims most airplanes do go quite fast at straight line, speeds usually deteriorate as the energy state of the aircraft diminishes. Typical furball speeds are about the same or significantly lower than fighter speeds in FS2.
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: General Battuta on April 26, 2011, 05:59:40 pm
Yeah that's true, modern dogfights are often about who can go slowest without stalling.
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: Ryu Gemini on April 26, 2011, 06:02:09 pm
Ah, haven't gotten to Blue Planet yet (I've heard so many good things about it, so I am "saving" it for after I play some other mods first).   

I am somewhat new still, which mod is SAFSO an acronym for? 

Edit:  Have any mods that use some form of Freespace setting tried it yet?  Or only the massive conversions and major alteration mods so far? 
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: The E on April 26, 2011, 06:05:59 pm
SAFSO == Stellar Assault for FSO. Somewhere among the hosted projects.
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: General Battuta on April 26, 2011, 06:08:20 pm
Quote from: Ryu Gemini on April 26, 2011, 06:02:09 pm
Edit:  Have any mods that use some form of Freespace setting tried it yet?  Or only the massive conversions and major alteration mods so far?

Not really. Kinda the Syrk demo, but unfortunately it did not play very well. I suspect that team will pull itself together in time for their main release though.
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: JGZinv on April 26, 2011, 06:34:42 pm
FringeSpace is another WIP TC that will be more fast and action oriented as well. We're just struggling with content building...

Tachyon is what we're based on, which you can see how that works here.
http://youtu.be/eg6u5o0Fonk?hd=1

That's with slow ships...

The problem with cap ship strafing is that without a well tuned defense screen on the part of the cap, fast fighters can tear right
through several cruisers at will. Obviously there's weapon balance in terms of what you can mount per fighter class too. Unfortunately
Tach did neither of these.
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: Sushi on April 26, 2011, 07:21:38 pm
Wow, this takes me back. (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=667) :)

The way I think of it these days is that it's like being on a motorcycle or wave runner: what's important isn't how fast you're going, but how fast it feels. Vanilla Freespace tends to feel a bit slow, especially with the heavy fighters and big bombers. As already pointed out, there are a lot of (pretty successful) ways to fix this.

Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: Vengence on April 26, 2011, 07:30:23 pm
I often fiddle with excessive speedy ships and I usually enjoy it personally but I am often imperceptive enough that I don't often see the AI issues faster speeds would cause. Example, in the mini EVE mod I made I originally had fighters at 350ms on average and drones exceeding 500ms. This completely borked the Drone's ability to combat stationary ships as they are sooooooo fast that by time they align to attack a large ship they're already too close and have to veer off to avoid collisions. With that lil mishap on me I reduced drone speed to 300ms and fighter speed to 200ms. The results are pretty positive in open space. Still a bit borky against big ships. This is with DEFAULT AI mind you.

More or less, in my opinion, using the default AI in FS2 you shouldn't go near 500ms at all for anything. Maybe only for highly scripted objects. 300ms is decent but things can get very chaotic very fast. 200ms in my experience is a decent speed. Enemy fighters will dogfight like normal with few issues and doesn't feel like a snail pace.

Size is another factor. The 300ms drones I fought against in my mod were virtually impossible to hit with standard projectile style weapons. Easy with beam weapons but still, for the sake of difficulty I'd avoid having small sized craft going at ludicrous speeds.
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: chief1983 on April 27, 2011, 10:12:52 am
FotG will have significantly faster fighter speeds, and as they are very small, this will pretty much necessitate some sort of computer assisted targeting in many cases.  Wanderer has helped a lot with the code in that area, but we still need a bindable toggle for it (which we can do with the new pilot code).  However, my main concern is that this autoaim would make it impossible to hit a player in multi, since you would need to lead shoot, as we have server side hit detection.  I fear that relying on autoaim for high speed combat is going to make multi very difficult to pull off, does anyone have any evidence for this one way or the other yet?
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: General Battuta on April 27, 2011, 10:14:01 am
I suspect you are correct.
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: Herra Tohtori on April 27, 2011, 10:25:20 am
It's not impossible

I used to bulls-eye womp rats in my T-16 back home
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: General Battuta on April 27, 2011, 10:31:27 am
Quote from: Herra Tohtori on April 27, 2011, 10:25:20 am
It's not impossible

I used to bulls-eye womp rats in my T-16 back home

But you weren't using a targeting computer
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: JGZinv on April 27, 2011, 12:16:07 pm
and they weren't much larger than two meters either....
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: Droid803 on April 27, 2011, 12:23:35 pm
Yeah, I had to turn on autoaim with a small FoV for dogfights not to take forever and a day for 300m/s ships.
Then again, additive weapon velocity messes a lot of it up too.
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: Herra Tohtori on April 27, 2011, 12:30:35 pm
Increased rate of fire, projectile velocity and damage, more difficult to hit but devastating when you do.

I always thought the FreeSpace way of dealing with damage (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DeathOfAThousandCuts) was somewhat silly.
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: chief1983 on April 27, 2011, 12:48:29 pm
That's not really absurd though.  You can be brought down by enough ants, or bees, even if one won't provide a significant allergic reaction.  We do have a pretty high ROF, and I believe we have a fairly fast weapon speed, but with server side hit detection, even if you fired an instantaneous beam directly at your target, you could still end up firing behind it as far as the server is concerned.  Therein lies the major weakness of server side detection, without movement prediction.
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: Droid803 on April 27, 2011, 01:26:14 pm
Quote from: Herra Tohtori on April 27, 2011, 12:30:35 pm
Increased rate of fire, projectile velocity and damage, more difficult to hit but devastating when you do.

I always thought the FreeSpace way of dealing with damage (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DeathOfAThousandCuts) was somewhat silly.

That devolves into spamming aimlessly into the void while spinning and then having stuff just dying anyway.
Not too fulfilling, if dogfighting the Cordi are any indication :P
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: JGZinv on April 27, 2011, 01:26:31 pm
We should get around to those multiplayer tests, between Stellar Assault, FotG, and ourselves.
We had that earlier thread on multi based object updates and hit detection being a concern - which degraded rather quickly, but
I don't think anyone did any significant testing to see what the results would be with our speedy mods.
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: Dragon on April 27, 2011, 02:17:07 pm
I'd also like to mention that there are 3 high speed  "atmospheric" mods which are, in one way or another, worked on.
DEFCON FreeSpace, by ShadowGorrath (last time I seen him, he was redoing it).
Wings, by Woolie Wool (I don't know how far this one is).
Aces High, by me (stalled due to problems with assets and code limitations back then, but nearing restart).
All of them had working, high velocity flight model (300m/s, around 500 on AB, was the norm in Aces), which was quite playable, although the exact execution differed.
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: Shivan Hunter on April 27, 2011, 02:50:49 pm
Quote from: Herra Tohtori on April 27, 2011, 12:30:35 pm
Increased rate of fire, projectile velocity and damage, more difficult to hit but devastating when you do.

A thousand times this

It's a hell of a lot more realistic, and while it would have to be balanced carefully, the Syrk demo is a good example of what not to do in this respect (sorry Syrk team but hammering at enemies for a minute before they die, even with secondaries, is not exactly fun). Something along the lines of FS1-style combat, where you're really in danger of dying every second you're in a dogfight rather than just relying on some massively powerful energy shield.

If dying in two or three hits sounds terrifying, maybe introduce gameplay elements like Procyon Insurgency-esque hull repair (or maybe modules- like the "tertiary weapons" thing that was being worked on at one point- that slowly and gradually repair your hull like some armors do in ME1).
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: General Battuta on April 27, 2011, 02:54:17 pm
Equipment is in War in Heaven R2, one of the items is a self-repair system. It is very easily done, whether you want it mountable or simply omnipresent. The easiest.

ed: Also in Wings of Dawn 2 frontin' for my brother Spoon
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: Dragon on April 27, 2011, 03:02:52 pm
Syrk weapons have rather pathetic DPS in addition to their ROF, in Aces High, there's no such thing.
A gatling gun will shred enemy fighters if only you manage to hit them. There's no self repair, but landing a hit is rather difficult.
Of course, you'd also go down if you get under gunfire, but the whole point of defensive BFM is to avoid that.
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: MetalDestroyer on April 27, 2011, 03:30:12 pm
Increasing ships velocity is not a real trouble. The thing is, if you want to modify the velocity in the main Freespace 2 campaign, you need to rebalance each ships, weapons, and also each missions.
For mods or stand alone using FSO, the problem disapear except the fact that enemy ship controlled by the AI will be very hard to hit.

And I really don't like the idea to have auto-aim to balance the problem.
The demo of Beyond the Red Line is a good example of what you want. Or you can also watch some videos I made, here (max velocity is 225 m/s without afterburner, 280 m/s (1 000 Km/h) with afterburner) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWwuF3s6lpg) or here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBlO1ZxsKas). :)

For FSO, I think the best value for max velocity must not be further than 400 m/s. I didn't try to go further, but I'll think about it, next time I have the motivation to modify ships tables.
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: chief1983 on April 27, 2011, 03:34:28 pm
Keep in mind that the ship velocity is only part of the problem, FotG has ships a fraction the size of FS2 fighters (The A-wing clocks in at a little over 6m long!), and that change alone makes ships drastically harder to hit at any speed.  They also tend to have very difficult profiles.  Look at a TIE or a B-wing from behind, and tell me what the target area is.  I almost miss the XvT hitboxes...
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: MetalDestroyer on April 27, 2011, 03:36:50 pm
Yup, I forgot this crucial point. :)
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: chief1983 on April 27, 2011, 03:39:20 pm
I think it will lead to interesting combat tactics though.  A TIE is much easier to hit if you can catch a side angle, so trying to tail one isn't the most effective way to score a hit.  X-wings would be widest from above/below, etc.  Could lead to some cool behaviors.
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: AndrewofDoom on April 27, 2011, 04:04:45 pm
I would just like to point out that Quanto, Thaeris, Spoon, and I have indeed trying out multiplayer a few times in Stellar Assault FSO in the past. Indeed, autoaim makes hitting anything in multiplayer impossible for everyone except the host because of lag. All the clients had to rely on missiles to hit anything

So, in essence, the higher the speed is, the more of an advantage the host has. If there's autoaim, multiply said advantage by two. Might have to deal with that.
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: jr2 on April 27, 2011, 09:34:23 pm
Quote from: chief1983 on April 27, 2011, 10:12:52 am
FotG will have significantly faster fighter speeds, and as they are very small, this will pretty much necessitate some sort of computer assisted targeting in many cases.  Wanderer has helped a lot with the code in that area, but we still need a bindable toggle for it (which we can do with the new pilot code).  However, my main concern is that this autoaim would make it impossible to hit a player in multi, since you would need to lead shoot, as we have server side hit detection.  I fear that relying on autoaim for high speed combat is going to make multi very difficult to pull off, does anyone have any evidence for this one way or the other yet?

Have the auto-aim target the lead shot indicator, but have the lead shot indicator take ping into its calculation?  IDK
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: StargateSpankyHam on April 28, 2011, 12:30:59 am
You don't need auto-aim, necessarily.

Just set the guns to say, between 0.5 and 1 FOF, increase the rate of fire a LOT, decrease energy consumption accordingly, and just scale the projectile speed proportionate to the increase in fighter speed.

I'd love to see capships zooming around at 80-100 m/s, with fighters occasionally reaching 1000+ m/s in afterburner.

Unfortunately, hundreds of KM/sec on capships (and higher for fighters) isn't really feasible - especially since the max beam range is 32 KM.

Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: Scourge of Ages on April 28, 2011, 01:04:00 am
This concept is an idea I'm working on. I'm partway through tabling the ships and weapons up.
I adjusted fighters to about double their FS2 speeds, while at least halving maneuverability, just like has been suggested above.
Right now the fastest fighter clocks 120 mps and the fastest cap at around 60.
I'll see how it works when I start testing.
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: Reprobator on April 28, 2011, 01:10:58 am
well in our mod our fighter reach around 550m/s in regular flight and we have afterburner a bit like wing commander : no recharge
The afterburner do not provide a "kick", it is quite progressive , In continuous afterburner after 4/5 minute fighter may reach their max speed at 3000m/s
Our fighter are really small so we have a Little autoaim and high rate of fire gun.
The cap ship are about 100m/s the only problem we have with that is : after 1/2 minute of continuous afterburner : the ship continue to be shaken even when afterburner is off....
I'll probably mantis that though  :nervous:
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: Sushi on April 28, 2011, 01:25:15 am
Quote from: StargateSpankyHam on April 28, 2011, 12:30:59 am
Just set the guns to say, between 0.5 and 1 FOF, increase the rate of fire a LOT, decrease energy consumption accordingly, and just scale the projectile speed proportionate to the increase in fighter speed.

Some serious problems that crop up doing this. The main one is the object limit. FSO can only track so many discrete objects, including weapon shots. You get to that limit pretty quickly with rapid-fire weapons.

Furthermore, fire rate is limited by FPS. This means that the actual effectiveness of the weapon can vary wildly with the system it's being played on and whatever else is affecting the FPS.

If you have high-geometry ships in the battle, all of those particles are going to be involved in collision detection, leading to yet another source of slowdowns.

Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: bigchunk1 on April 28, 2011, 02:11:54 am
I used to wonder why Fs2 speeds are somewhat sluggish until I played multiplayer. If a fighter is too fast in multi, the right pilot will turn and accelerate to the point where he or she is impossible to hit. This makes the game, especially dogfights prettymuch unplayable.

If you want a modding solution for this, there is a table feature called $Inner_damage_radius $Outer_Damage_Radius or something like that I don't remember the syntax. This allows your weapon to be effective even if you slightly miss the target as it will explode when within proximity. An example of this weapon is the flak cannon, only imagine it on a fighter. Perhaps with or without all those particle effects. Such a weapon is much more easier to hit a target with, add a field of fire ($FOF) and a decent rate of fire and you have a weapon that does not require much aiming at all.

Also, depending on your controls or your experience with flight sims, you might find a speedy ship difficult to pilot. Slow speeds make the game acessable to a wider audience.

In light of these facts, I think freespace retail made a decision to take gameplay over realism. It set the standard, though newer mods, such as Syrk are experimenting with faster and more sharply turning ships.

Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: MetalDestroyer on April 28, 2011, 02:58:55 am
Quote from: Scourge of Ages on April 28, 2011, 01:04:00 am
This concept is an idea I'm working on. I'm partway through tabling the ships and weapons up.
I adjusted fighters to about double their FS2 speeds, while at least halving maneuverability, just like has been suggested above.
Right now the fastest fighter clocks 120 mps and the fastest cap at around 60.
I'll see how it works when I start testing.

If you're thinking to modify those for Freespace 2 main campaign, you'll encounter some issue in some mission. Specially the ones concerning to protect transport/capital/others from bombers/fighters/heavy fighters.
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: Ryu Gemini on April 28, 2011, 03:12:23 am
On the note of faster capital ships, has anyone here played an old game called Klingon Academy?  It may be old, but I always loved that game.  Come to think of it, did any other star trek game ever let you fly around battleship class vessels like that one did?


It could be interesting if someone could make a campaign that is based on players flying capital ships instead of fighters.  For reasons of not being a total bore, said capital ships would have to move at speeds vastly exceeding those of standard FS2 campaign caps (100 m/s or more would work, keep in mind that they would "appear" slower due to the player flying one). 

Any number of interesting things could be implimented for capital ships controlled by players.  Damage control for instance (maybe press a button to bring up a menu for which subsystem gets auto-repaired, or to focus on the hull).  Weapons systems are of course something too.  Perhaps giving players the ability to choose anti-ship turret targets, or partially go a Klingon Academy approach and have weapons that are manually fired from the sides (like a broadside blast from an old 17th century warship).   Give these side-weapons enough power and a long enough cooldown and you could encourage a player to fly in circles in order to use the other side's "cannons" on the same enemy.  Especially so if there are similar weapons facing forward and aft. 
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: Scourge of Ages on April 28, 2011, 03:15:10 am
Quote from: MetalDestroyer on April 28, 2011, 02:58:55 am
If you're thinking to modify those for Freespace 2 main campaign, you'll encounter some issue in some mission. Specially the ones concerning to protect transport/capital/others from bombers/fighters/heavy fighters.
Oh sweet merciful sheep, no, I wouldn't dream of that  :lol: There will be custom missions.
Though considering the other projects mentioned in this thread, mine seems a bit tame. Hey Reprobator, you may be interested in this thread if you're accelerating to 3000 mps+ : http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=71965.msg1422116#msg1422116
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: headdie on April 28, 2011, 03:35:00 am
what do you need to do to stop yourself self destructing?
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: Sushi on April 28, 2011, 09:35:30 am
Quote from: MetalDestroyer on April 28, 2011, 02:58:55 am
Quote from: Scourge of Ages on April 28, 2011, 01:04:00 am
This concept is an idea I'm working on. I'm partway through tabling the ships and weapons up.
I adjusted fighters to about double their FS2 speeds, while at least halving maneuverability, just like has been suggested above.
Right now the fastest fighter clocks 120 mps and the fastest cap at around 60.
I'll see how it works when I start testing.

If you're thinking to modify those for Freespace 2 main campaign, you'll encounter some issue in some mission. Specially the ones concerning to protect transport/capital/others from bombers/fighters/heavy fighters.

This sounds exactly like the Velocity Mod I make a decade ago and referenced in an earlier post. :)

http://www.freespacemods.net/download.php?view.168

It does change the balance of the main campaign, but it's still plenty playable, even on Insane. Velocity Mod does NOT change capship speeds, though, since mission events are often carefully timed based on how long it takes a destroyer or transport to go from A to B.
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: chief1983 on April 28, 2011, 02:41:12 pm
You can support a high ROF with low weapon energies, but fast recharges.  This gives you a short burst of high ROF, which is what FotG is going to do to give users the movie feel.
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: MetalDestroyer on April 28, 2011, 04:43:58 pm
Since I read this topic, I've decided to give a try and modify ships velocity. Fighters/Bombers go now at 800-950 m/s without afterburner and 1200 m/s max with AB.
And Capital goes to 350 m/s.

The testing mission wasn't fit for this kind of velocity. But well, I wanna know. I was amazed when I saw all those ships moving very fast. The only complains concern the difficulty to manœuvre our ship with a mouse to track our target. I didn't  have the time to prepare my HOTAS.
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: Dragon on April 28, 2011, 04:55:18 pm
That's a bit too much, speeds like that mean almost Mach 3, which is much, much faster than any real fighter ever got close to (SR-71 did, but it was a recon/spy plane).
IMHO, if you're going for realism, the preferable velocity for fighters would be around 300-400m/s, with AB up to 700. Of course, in space, these are still inaccurate, but then, you'd need a fully newtonian flight model to really simulate space flight. This means, for example, infnite max speed, but this also means you'll start hitting practical speed limits, not to mention the fact you'll be working with relative speeds then. In short, combat would be completely different. Unfortunately, full newtonian flight model isn't implemented in FSO yet,
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: Reprobator on April 28, 2011, 05:01:25 pm
well my good old metal if you add Newtonian dampening on your ship and force AI to use it too, you'll end with easier dogfight (i mean for aiming) because when you are  turning with fighter, it would slow you down which means for example with ep actually:
500/600 m/s in straight line but in a circle dogfight you generally fly at 200/300 due to the loss of energy.
You can also see the target's orientation before the trajectory change happen as it have inertia.
This has another advantage : it allow tactics like boom 'n zoom which are meaningless without energy loss and Newtonian dampening.
hey allow tactics like flat scissor/barrel roll ... all tactics (manoeuvre) that make the enemy in your six to overshoot you.

Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: MetalDestroyer on April 28, 2011, 05:05:25 pm
Quote from: Reprobator on April 28, 2011, 05:01:25 pm
well my good old metal if you add newtonian dampening on your ship and force ai to use it too, you'll end with easyer dogfight (i mean for aiming) because when turning fighter would slowdown wich means for exemple with ep actually:
500/600 m/s in straight line but in a circle dogfight you generally fly at 200/300 due to the loss of energy.
THis as another advantage : it allow tactics like boom 'n zoom wich are meaningless without energy loss and newtonian dampening.


I added the newtonian dampening, but no success. Ok, it's a little more easy, but still, with a mouse the gameplay is horrible. :)
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: Reprobator on April 28, 2011, 05:06:58 pm
how much dampening  ?
anyway even with dampening , our ship are so small that above 100 m/s we had to activate feature like autoaim... but with very little fov
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: jr2 on April 28, 2011, 06:44:39 pm
Quote from: MetalDestroyer on April 28, 2011, 05:05:25 pm
I added the newtonian dampening, but no success. Ok, it's a little more easy, but still, with a mouse the gameplay is horrible. :)

Try the mouse/joy toggle script?
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: Ryu Gemini on May 01, 2011, 03:18:26 pm
A mouse generally doesn't work so well with games like this, IMO.  I mean, Freelancer managed to get it to work alright but otherwise you usually want to use a joystick for this genre of games (whether it be space-sim or a modern flight combat sim).  Or failing that, a console-like controller. 


The dampener idea sounds nice too.  I mean, if we disregard reality and assume space has this weird "ether drag" that limits the top speed of craft based on their engine output, then it makes sense that when in dog fights you'd slow down, same as you would with normal atmospheric drag. 



I still wonder how well a Star Trek-like capital ship-ONLY setting would work out.  It would require some creativity on the part of the modder, but with higher speed capital ships you open the possibility of a player being able to viably control one.  By creativity, I mean ways of ensuring a player would fly a capital ship in a manner that is not just an oversized fighter (perhaps arranging turrets in a manner that requires the player broad-siding enemy ships to use those turrets on them, etc). 


Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: General Battuta on May 01, 2011, 03:20:17 pm
Quote
It would require some creativity on the part of the modder, but with higher speed capital ships you open the possibility of a player being able to viably control one.

I recall you mentioning you hadn't played BP2. You should!
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: Droid803 on May 01, 2011, 04:13:11 pm
In the interests of tooting my own horn, indeed, it does work fairly well.

(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v423/kc1991/fastercsc.jpg)

You can get from point A to point B reasonably fast, but the downside is you have a MASSIVE turning circle (unless you reverse and turn)
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: General Battuta on May 01, 2011, 04:15:22 pm
Heyyyyyyyyy, credit where credit's due  :(

(that's even the same dialogue  :nervous:)

Also we're moving all that stuff over to HUD gauges for BP2r2, it looks sexier there.
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: Droid803 on May 01, 2011, 04:16:22 pm
Credits to BP for their awesome, easy-to-port design of both the spell-system and the script.
I mean, I managed to copy it all in an afternoon and understand it enough to add a fourth ability :P
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: General Battuta on May 01, 2011, 04:17:32 pm
Yep, the ability SEXPs are very modular and you could basically have as many as the keyboard/interface can support.

Seriously though, HUD gauges, much prettier than training messages
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: Droid803 on May 01, 2011, 04:18:46 pm
problem is that hug gauges are more screen-resolution based, I don't want to accidentally override everyone's widescreen config and create STREEETCHY
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: General Battuta on May 01, 2011, 04:23:57 pm
Also, you should turn on the thingaling that replaces your ship's shield icon with a 3D image of your ship. It's kewl
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: Vengence on May 01, 2011, 04:29:15 pm
Quote from: Droid803 on May 01, 2011, 04:13:11 pm
In the interests of tooting my own horn, indeed, it does work fairly well.

(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v423/kc1991/fastercsc.jpg)

You can get from point A to point B reasonably fast, but the downside is you have a MASSIVE turning circle (unless you reverse and turn)

Damn Droid! You made my jaw drop! That's awesome!
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: General Battuta on May 01, 2011, 04:33:23 pm
Ahem. If you're going to drop your jaw, have the courtesy to drop it to the original. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xz2T3U1DnKg)
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: Vengence on May 01, 2011, 05:12:09 pm
No offense General, sir! But I was referring to seeing my cruiser being playable  ;).
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: General Battuta on May 01, 2011, 05:13:13 pm
Ah right. That is indeed awesome, and it's my impression Droid has really taken the concept and run with it.
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: MetalDestroyer on May 01, 2011, 05:22:20 pm
Quote from: Ryu Gemini on May 01, 2011, 03:18:26 pm
I still wonder how well a Star Trek-like capital ship-ONLY setting would work out.  It would require some creativity on the part of the modder, but with higher speed capital ships you open the possibility of a player being able to viably control one.  By creativity, I mean ways of ensuring a player would fly a capital ship in a manner that is not just an oversized fighter (perhaps arranging turrets in a manner that requires the player broad-siding enemy ships to use those turrets on them, etc). 

You want Capital with high speed. And nevertheless you want a Star Trek-like Capital ship. Well, here your gift (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUS4y6BEoAc). All those capital move as fast as a fighter with a difference of 100 m/s. Just release the video because of this topic. :)
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: jr2 on May 01, 2011, 08:04:54 pm
Quote from: Ryu Gemini on May 01, 2011, 03:18:26 pm
A mouse generally doesn't work so well with games like this, IMO.  I mean, Freelancer managed to get it to work alright but otherwise you usually want to use a joystick for this genre of games (whether it be space-sim or a modern flight combat sim).  Or failing that, a console-like controller. 

Mouse script with button toggle (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=74435.0)?  ;)
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: Ryu Gemini on May 03, 2011, 09:22:29 pm
Quote from: General Battuta on May 01, 2011, 03:20:17 pm
Quote
It would require some creativity on the part of the modder, but with higher speed capital ships you open the possibility of a player being able to viably control one.

I recall you mentioning you hadn't played BP2. You should!



I have now.  Blue Planet and BP2 chapter one.  Very awesome.

...except, there was NO mission in the campaign from what I can tell where you actually control a capital ship.  Only this "gunship" thing which was basically a heavy fighter with an oversized railgun slung underneath it. 

Techroom has two other missions available:  a what-if-scenario major fleet conflict that drops me to about 2 fps, and a mission that seems like some kind of race track.  In both, you play as a fighter. 

Is the capital ship something that is being worked on in chapter 2 or something?  Or am I using an "outdated" variant of Chapter 1? 

Spoiler:
It ended after we jumped out, ended up adrift and falling towards the sun.  A friendly ship arrives in response to the distress signal, and mentions the only reason it actually came to rescue them was because of the player pilot being on board.  Cue credits, musical number, and showing off of various ships.  Followed by the "to be continued" whatnot.


Am I missing something here? 
.
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: General Battuta on May 03, 2011, 09:25:25 pm
Yep. Go to the campaign room, take a look at the campaign list.  ;)
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: Dragon on May 04, 2011, 06:07:28 am
Yes, R1 main campaign does not feature capship flying.
"The Blade Itself", an experimental side campaign, does.
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: Vengence on May 04, 2011, 11:21:44 am
I've played that mission like 10x over and over again. There really should be a cap ship focused campaign some day. It was extremely fun if a bit confusing at first. Reading top text while trying to manage maneuvers and tactics is a bit hard. Granted I feel sorry for the AI, my maneuvering methods involve a lot of gliding to simultaneously lure in bombers into a gauntlet of fire while blasting a corvette at range. If they AI could do this then goodness space cap combat is gonna be quite invigorating  ;).
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: -Sara- on May 06, 2011, 05:40:11 am
I think if you make your fighters go fast, they should be far less maneuverable to avoid everything flying around like drunk wasps. Also, that way you got to position yourself and probably strike larger ships in a fly-by like a present day bomber does, which can give for interesting choices of anti-fighter/bomber defenses on larger ships, provoking players to disarm the larger ships of opponent first. I guess it may end up being a bit like aerial battle.
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: Kopachris on May 06, 2011, 07:44:33 am
Quote from: MetalDestroyer on May 01, 2011, 05:22:20 pm
Quote from: Ryu Gemini on May 01, 2011, 03:18:26 pm
I still wonder how well a Star Trek-like capital ship-ONLY setting would work out.  It would require some creativity on the part of the modder, but with higher speed capital ships you open the possibility of a player being able to viably control one.  By creativity, I mean ways of ensuring a player would fly a capital ship in a manner that is not just an oversized fighter (perhaps arranging turrets in a manner that requires the player broad-siding enemy ships to use those turrets on them, etc). 

You want Capital with high speed. And nevertheless you want a Star Trek-like Capital ship. Well, here your gift (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUS4y6BEoAc). All those capital move as fast as a fighter with a difference of 100 m/s. Just release the video because of this topic. :)

I imagine that playable capships and high speeds would be absolutely necessary for a good Star Trek mod.  Does the engine have any limits on the size of the playing field, though?  On Star Trek, you often hear them talking about being thousands of kilometers away from other ships while firing.  For that matter, if we were to do that, we'd need some sort of way to zoom in on targets, too.
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: MetalDestroyer on May 06, 2011, 08:51:57 am
Quote from: Kopachris on May 06, 2011, 07:44:33 am
Quote from: MetalDestroyer on May 01, 2011, 05:22:20 pm
Quote from: Ryu Gemini on May 01, 2011, 03:18:26 pm
I still wonder how well a Star Trek-like capital ship-ONLY setting would work out.  It would require some creativity on the part of the modder, but with higher speed capital ships you open the possibility of a player being able to viably control one.  By creativity, I mean ways of ensuring a player would fly a capital ship in a manner that is not just an oversized fighter (perhaps arranging turrets in a manner that requires the player broad-siding enemy ships to use those turrets on them, etc). 

You want Capital with high speed. And nevertheless you want a Star Trek-like Capital ship. Well, here your gift (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUS4y6BEoAc). All those capital move as fast as a fighter with a difference of 100 m/s. Just release the video because of this topic. :)

I imagine that playable capships and high speeds would be absolutely necessary for a good Star Trek mod.  Does the engine have any limits on the size of the playing field, though?  On Star Trek, you often hear them talking about being thousands of kilometers away from other ships while firing.  For that matter, if we were to do that, we'd need some sort of way to zoom in on targets, too.

With LUA you can implement a zoom feature. IIRC, there is a script somewhere on this forum. I dunno if the autodestruction after X Km has been disabled. I remember with the retail, if I go to far my ship selfdestruct without reason.
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: JGZinv on May 06, 2011, 12:42:48 pm
This is probably the zoom script you are looking for... http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=70411.0
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: Ryu Gemini on May 11, 2011, 03:33:42 pm
I forget, does the Star Trek universe even HAVE fighters as a standard vessel? 

My knowledge of "non-standard" ships is limited to the old game Klingon Academy, in which the Federation has a modified shuttle with a torpedo tube installed, and one of the lesser-known races (that is only really usable in skirmish modes) focuses on carrier capital ships with lots of fighters. 

I really did love that game.  One of the enjoyable aspects was how destructible various ship parts were.  These show off the various aspects pretty well. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMkp8CSA05o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLXM4T9hKII
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srAtXjhH9YQ

Clearly, the game's engine doesn't work as well as one might always like on the most recent operating systems, but oh well. 

I still loathe that mission where you have to chase a ship into the atmosphere of a gas giant, however.  Now THAT mission was a total pain of power allocation whatnot (the atmosphere of a gas giant tends to grate away at your hull and shields pretty quickly even at lower speeds).


If anyone were to do a total overhaul-style capital ship mod for Star Trek, Klingon Academy would be a good template to get ideas from. 


Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: lostllama on May 12, 2011, 05:08:01 am
Quote from: Ryu Gemini on May 11, 2011, 03:33:42 pm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srAtXjhH9YQ

Heh heh. Fly Bird of Prey, fly!
Title: Re: How well would significantly faster vehicles work?
Post by: jr2 on May 12, 2011, 03:27:37 pm
There were fighters.  You hear them mentioned a few times in ST:DS9 when attacking the Founder-led Cardassian fleet (with only a few appearances on-screen IIRC).  I believe ST:Enterprise had a few of them too when the Xindi attack Earth the second time in the episode "Zero Hour"