[paul1290]

I always found it a bit odd how capital ships generally don't maneuver very much when fighting in Freespace.

Is this a limitation in the engine or is it just that way for gameplay purposes?

I always thought it would have made more sense if you had capital ships slowly moving around one another, fighting for better positioning and to bring more of their big guns into view of their targets.

[General Battuta]

A good FREDder can set up such maneuvering with manually placed waypoints, but the limited capital ship AI doesn't generally support it, I believe.

[Dilmah G]

I always found it a bit odd how capital ships generally don't maneuver very much when fighting in Freespace.

Is this a limitation in the engine or is it just that way for gameplay purposes?

I always thought it would have made more sense if you had capital ships slowly moving around one another, fighting for better positioning and to bring more of their big guns into view of their targets.

Well if you give a CapShip an attack order, make them both invincible, and load the mission up in freespace. Crank the time compression up and watch them. That's pretty much what they do, aka the 'Circle of Death'. They do this until they are both aligned on their broadside. However this is usually well after one of the ships normally would've gone under.

A good FREDder can set up such maneuvering with manually placed waypoints, but the limited capital ship AI doesn't generally support it, I believe.

That's also true. Capship battles look a lot more interesting if they follow carefully placed waypoints, to make it look like they're duking it out and trying to bring their broadside cannons to bear, or forward if you're talking about a Shivan ship, as they commonly have a very offensive beam layout.

[FreeSpaceFreak]

At destroyer speed, maneuvering is too slow to even be noticed. At cruiser speed, it does get interesting.

[eliex]

Yeah, its a competition to get the forward beams a good shot at the opposing one first . . . or a flak death. 

[FUBAR-BDHR]

The bigger the ships the harder it is to script a good battle.  They need a lot of space to turn.  Even when you get it set up nicely if they miss a waypoint for some reason they will try to go back for it and it looks terrible.  They will go vertical and twist which throws off the timing of the whole mission.  In multi on the client side they will appear to jump back and forth trying to make the sharp turn to get back to the waypoint. 

[terran_emperor]

Also the bigger ones can turn pretty spectacularly if their centre of rotation is in a strange place - like the GTVA Giant-Baseball-Bat...Ahem. I mean Colossus.

Someone really needs to make a video of the off centre colossus swinging to Dead or Alive's "You Spin Me Right Round" (original version) or... dare i say it  the Dreaded Leakspin

[Rodo]

I'm a fan of freding every single bit of a mission for better control, if you are having a cap to cap combat you must concentrate on the combat itself first, place all waypoints and check the timing, you can even handle the beam fire rate if you want.

I'm so wanting a sexp to control the rotation on their axis for cap ships, that ought to be very usefull... somebody said that a set-object-position could be used for that but it looks a little.. odd

[eliex]

Also you've got to watch out for what the player might do especially if flying a bomber. Can't have one destroyer disabled and still the other accidentally ramming into it - but a simple if-disabled-delay/ remove-goals SEXP would do the trick.

[Scotty]

Yeah, or just keep the waypoints far enough that it doesn't happen.  It does look pretty badass to have some cruisers spinning around killing each other with flak cannons (and any fighter unlucky enough to get in the way.).

[Roanoke]

Cap-ship AI is significally simplier than Fighters'. Can't remember where I read that. FRED docs, maybe ?

[Androgeos Exeunt]

Trying to make a good fight between warships using waypoints is a little difficult, though.

You must also take into consideration the dimensions of the warships in battle: their height, weight, mass, turn rate, volume, area, engine wash, polygons...

[Narvi]

Trying to make a good fight between warships using waypoints is a little difficult, though.

You must also take into consideration the dimensions of the warships in battle: their height, weight, mass, turn rate, volume, area, engine wash, polygons...

Engine wash? 

[GenericCorvette]

Fly into a capital ship's giant thruster glow and see what happens.

[Narvi]

Fly into a capital ship's giant thruster glow and see what happens.

I know what engine wash is. I'm not seeing how mild bumpiness for fighters is going to affect giant capital ship waypoints.

[Droid803]

It doesn't affect capital ship waypoints, but its not fun to be constantly dogfighting in engine wash.

Also, its not always 'mild bumpiness'. If you've played INFR1, you'd know that if you went into the engine wash of something, you get spun around endlessly. Plus you take damage.

[Narvi]

It doesn't affect capital ship waypoints, but its not fun to be constantly dogfighting in engine wash.

Also, its not always 'mild bumpiness'. If you've played INFR1, you'd know that if you went into the engine wash of something, you get spun around endlessly. Plus you take damage.

Not in FS vanilla though. Is it such a big problem? It's only in one sector of a cap, after all.

The TVWP demo did the whole engine wash thing very well. It's lots of fun luring AI ships into engine wash and then shooting them as they twirl about. 

[Charismatic]

Any way to add to the Cap ship ai program?