[BlackDove]

Multiple lock-ons with aspect seeking missiles (like...four trying to lock on at once to targets of opportunity).

Another thing is sort of like the turret on an Ursa, but rather made from a first person perspective, much like Freelancer's guns work. I know it's kind of stupid to suggest, because AFAIK it shouldn't be possible to get your targeting reticle graphic to scroll all over the screen as it's adjusting to the onscreen target (it'd be good if it was aimbotted too, but you yourself controling when the firing commences and stops, kind of impossible with turrets I gather).

Anyway, I was just wondering if those two are..... possible.

[mikhael]

Freelancer's turret view would be one of the greatest additions to Freespace ever. EVER.

[BlackDove]

Also, I noticed I didn't say that I'd like for that "turret" to work as main guns.

...like. Your normal gun banks being used in the way Freelancer uses its guns from third person perspective...

...like that.

I don't know if mikhael is suggesting something else, but that's what I'm going for. Just too stupid to write it in the first post, because my attention span is level retarded.

[mikhael]

I think you explained pretty well in the first post. It sounds to me like you'd like to be able to fire at any arbitrary point on the screen with turreted weapons.

That's different from what I posted, but you made me think of it. One of the views in Freelancer is Turret view. In turret view, the camera rotates around the ship, letting you aim your turrets in any direction. This is almost essential when you're flying something like a large cargo craft, because it lets you aim your side, belly and back turrets at particular enemies.

[Turnsky]

you mean like the AI flies the ship, and you man the 'ball turret' so to speak?

[BlackDove]

Originally posted by mikhael
I think you explained pretty well in the first post. It sounds to me like you'd like to be able to fire at any arbitrary point on the screen with turreted weapons.

That's different from what I posted, but you made me think of it. One of the views in Freelancer is Turret view. In turret view, the camera rotates around the ship, letting you aim your turrets in any direction. This is almost essential when you're flying something like a large cargo craft, because it lets you aim your side, belly and back turrets at particular enemies.

Oh I didn't know that. That sounds good too.

I was just thinking the generic guns, working like...you know. Freelancerish type guns. Shoot shoot to the corner of my screen, shoot shoot to the other corner of my screen. Just for it to be in first person.

Kind of like... like that mini game in Final Fantasy VII at the Gold Saucer

[Prophet]

My favourite example regarding this: Starlancer blind-fire! I have been crying for this in numerous occasions...

[Solitaire]

Turnsky: Nope, not exactly. In Freelancer your reticle is not welded to the centre of the screen as none of your guns are fixed, they ALL act like turrets, albeit ones limited to the frontal quadrant of the ship. Trying to push the reticle past the edge of the screen would eventually turn the ship itself, the closer to the edge of the screen the more violent the maneuver. FL's Turret Mode is essentially an extended version of this: you can now swing the reticle anywhere and the camera will follow but as it never leaves the centre of the screen the ship is unable to turn at all, its stuck in a straight line, the only changes you can make are in terms of speed. However, for as long as you remain in this mode you can get any weapons that can gain line-of-sight to the reticle and have no firing arc restrictions preventing them from turning to it to fire simultaneously at the same point. Move reticle in relation to ship and guns will add or remove their fire as they gain or lose a firing solution. This is vital to slow, clumsy freighters which are slow to turn but have considerable turret firepower to compensate, as turrets in Freelancer have NO AI at all, you need to use rear view or turret mode to use rear-facing guns AT ALL. Conversely, fighters with heavy frontal firepower and no or one turret won't bother using that turret ever - it can't do anything on its own, and you're too busy pointing your agile fighter's powerful forward primary banks at stuff to bother with that weak lone rear gun.

As to using this in FS? Not really such a fab idea - it'd take a lot of coding and major remodelling of every strikecraft in FS history. Freelancer strikecraft were designed with turretted guns specially in mind, the reason so many of them are comparatively butt-ugly compared to FS2 ships Plus there's the genuine challenge of maneuvering those fixed guns of ours into the firing line - its part of what makes FS. I wouldn't be opposed to sticking in some kind of turret mode in just for really huge, slow strikecraft - give the Ursa a couple of single-barrel Subach turrets, and limit fire rate and/or burst length while they're on AI, only allowing them to unleash their full firepower when the pilot goes into an attack run and switches to the turret mode to discourage the tailgaters while its waiting for those big ol' Helios launchers to acquire aspect lock. Makes life less boring for 'ceptor pilots anyway  But it'd take a beastly amount of coding I'd imagine...

[mikhael]

Actually, your ship WILL turn, if you use the keyboard.

As for not doing Turret mode for FSO...

Sorry, but FSO is not just for canon Freespace. If it were, there wouldn't be code mods for B5, nor would there be cel-shading.

[WMCoolmon]

I don't think it'd involve a beastly amount of coding.

Mostly -
A) Disable turret AI
B) Disable normal controls
C) Switch to special turret controls
D) Switch view to turret

Now obviously there's some extra stuff involved (like coding in limits and better weapon switching might be needed) but just doing that above would give you a somewhat usable, if hackish, turret implementation.

Further, I think it'd make it much better if the player ship 'object' was derived from a subobject. Taylor was talking about doing this for fighter beam cannons, but I don't remember the discussion name. But that would let a lot of the view and movement controls to be reused, so you could switch between first person, and the external view with the whole slew deal going on.

But of course I still have the mediaVPs + XMTs to finish, and that one little goodie I'd like to look into.

[BlackDove]

WM, it's not so much that I want turrets to change, as much as the main guns to operate freely within the radius of the front of your fighter (hell, or even better, make an attempt to AUTO target the main guns, exactly like turrets do) without moving the ship in order to shoot at a target (as is now, target has to be in centre of reticle, so you have to move your ship), while what I'm wondering is if it would be possible to get the main guns to aim for themselves, and turn themselves, without moving the ship at all.

Naturally, shooting or not shooting would be up to you, which is another difference from a turret fire.

[Wanderer]

So you mean like guns in the I-Wars?

IW2: Where standard cannons (not beams or missiles) are CPU controlled and when you fire the cannons the CPU aims them to the lead indicator if it is in the the vicinity of the targetting reticle. All you have to do is to keep the target quite close to the targetting reticle and CPU does the rest.

IW1: Same as above but no matter where you face your front and aft cannons could fire at any target if you choose the weapon control screen. Otherwise quite like in IW2.

I would like this too but i think it would perhaps be too far from the freespace (not counting total conversions). It would also need perhaps faster and/or more agile ships (by tabling) as hitting targets with such weapons is much easier than with current FS weapons. For evasions lateral controls would also be greatly needed...

[Prophet]

Originally posted by BlackDove
WM, it's not so much that I want turrets to change, as much as the main guns to operate freely within the radius of the front of your fighter (hell, or even better, make an attempt to AUTO target the main guns, exactly like turrets do) without moving the ship in order to shoot at a target (as is now, target has to be in centre of reticle, so you have to move your ship), while what I'm wondering is if it would be possible to get the main guns to aim for themselves, and turn themselves, without moving the ship at all.

Naturally, shooting or not shooting would be up to you, which is another difference from a turret fire.

Thats blind-fire you are talking about.

This is my crazy idea: Add a pinch of secondaries to the primaries. Primaries would have a lock-on indicator that would attempt to lock on your target. Just like secondaries. Once a lock is achived the primaries would automatically hit the lead indicator. (ie blind-fire). If no lock is possible/active on the current target, or no target is selected the primaries would function like they do now.

To prevent this from intefereing with the secondaries only one of the "lock-on modes" (secondary/primary) could be active at a time.

What do you think?

[BlackDove]

I think I shoud've posted this in the private forum so only my idea would be discussed, since it is after all a feature I would need personally.

My bad. Sorry.

[Solitaire]

Argh! Sorry sorry sorry BlackDove, threadjacking was NOT intentional! This topic just kinda... fell off-topic. Some just do that...

I'm not a coder (well, not game engines anyway!) so I really didn't have that much of an idea about how much work would be involved in adding optional Freelancer-style targetting to the FS2 source. It would certainly be nice for certain mods and total conversions, heck I'd love it but I just don't know how well it would fit in with the FS philosophy/mindset. Giving the front guns the ability to fire at anywhere the pilot desires within the front quadrant is a great idea, as is some kind of turret mode, but complete autotracking ("blindfire") seems like absolute overkill. Yeah, it's the only way to survive in VegaStrike, but that's because of the whacked-out newtonian physics engine... Prophet's idea seemed more feasible, but even then would need to be limited in implementation. And ship agility would indeed need rebalancing in mods where autotracking was used.

Anyway *tries to steer topic back on track* I like the idea of Armored Core-style missiles a lot, the trick would be implementation... multiple aspect locks per salvo suggests relatively quick lock times per round and variable salvo sizes, thus variable munitions expenditure. I'm guessing each lock would grab the hostile closest to the reticle at the time the lock process began, thus multiple missiles locked to the same target if said target did not move away from the reticle (or another target get closer to the reticle than it). WMCoolmon, any ideas at implementation possibilities?

As for the turret proposal... what Coolmon said! Oh, except that turret AI should be switchable on-off to give turret autotracking, if that was what BlackDove was originally hinting at

[Flaser]

How about Macross style lock-on?
...or finally implementing a radar system?

You control a targeting box inside the radar display - and 'manually lock onto' several targets. You move the box over the target blip and highlight it for tracking.

For dogfight we could combine it with a helmet-seeker. (Which would make padlock even better)
Look-on-Lock-on - SHOOT!