[General Battuta]

I like a good BOE now and again, and I think Blue Planet handled them beautifully. Engagements between the Temeraire and Orestes battlegroups and multiple Shivan destroyers were brilliant and gave the player something to do even while dishing out spectacular capital-ship eyecandy.

I love the feeling that the capital ships I'm fighting to protect are effective, lethal weapons platforms, not merely bases for fighters and bombers.

I also think that destroyer-on-destroyer duels, a la Starlancer's last few missions, can be really gripping, particularly if you've got some emotional attachment to the friendly ship and some reason to hate the enemy.

[Jake2447]

I like a good BOE now and again, and I think Blue Planet handled them beautifully. Engagements between the Temeraire and Orestes battlegroups and multiple Shivan destroyers were brilliant and gave the player something to do even while dishing out spectacular capital-ship eyecandy.

I love the feeling that the capital ships I'm fighting to protect are effective, lethal weapons platforms, not merely bases for fighters and bombers.

I also think that destroyer-on-destroyer duels, a la Starlancer's last few missions, can be really gripping, particularly if you've got some emotional attachment to the friendly ship and some reason to hate the enemy.

Agreed.  I feel that in most space combat games, capships have little strategic value, aside from deploying fighters/bombers.  Its almost pointless to have ship classes other than carriers.  However, FS2 makes capships viable weapons, and mission should use them in this way.  This is only enhanced with storyline tie-ins, evoking emotion, something FS2 can also be good at.

[karajorma]

also, since when does one unit save the day every time
only in video games, and ones which are usually criticized for this (think the FPS genre)

It's not about saving the day. It's about having some effect at all. Too many BoE missions have so many fighters and capships that the effect of the player being there is averaged out to nothing. The player can play at his best or simply walk away and it won't have the slightest effect on the mission outcome.

And to me, that is a bad mission.

[Polpolion]

Its almost pointless to have ship classes other than carriers.

You have obviously never encountered an Aeolus cruiser on a difficulty level higher than easy.

[Zarathud]

Its almost pointless to have ship classes other than carriers.

You have obviously never encountered an Aeolus cruiser on a difficulty level higher than easy.

An Aeolus cruiser with the right angle on its prey can be devastating when attacking at higher difficulty levels.  It's a bit vulnerable, so it needs some defense.

[General Battuta]

Its almost pointless to have ship classes other than carriers.

You have obviously never encountered an Aeolus cruiser on a difficulty level higher than easy.

Did you not catch that he was talking about games other than FS2?

He was saying an Aeolus is a viable combatant, as are other FS2 capital ships. His comment about the pointlessness of ships other than carriers was a jab at other space sims.

[Jake2447]

Its almost pointless to have ship classes other than carriers.

You have obviously never encountered an Aeolus cruiser on a difficulty level higher than easy.

Did you not catch that he was talking about games other than FS2?

He was saying an Aeolus is a viable combatant, as are other FS2 capital ships. His comment about the pointlessness of ships other than carriers was a jab at other space sims.

battuta quoted me correctly
I feel like in FS2 capships are powerful, which only supports BOE missions

and kara:
isnt walking out of a chaotic battle alive in some way affecting the outcome of the day
and it could obviously go farther than that without becoming rediculous
say the player takes down some bombs that are aimed at a friendly beam turret
that would obviously have an effect
but having Alpha wing warp in and destroy 3 cruisers every mission is just rediculous
that suffers from the same fundamental problem of most FPS games:
the player is always involved in every major battle, and always turn the tide of it
that just gets unrealistic

[karajorma]

I'm not saying it isn't. Here...

http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,55037.0.html

Read and enjoy. I'm not having the exact same argument twice in as many weeks.

[Zarathud]

if two warring factions came into conflict, im sure they would pour as many resources on as they could to win the battle
this would result in a large number of capships and pilots
so the game should simulate the feelings of being one pilot among many in a huge chaotic battle

So you've learned to armchair general from the academy of the RTS rather than studying logistics and tactics from a more traditional military school of thought? 

From a more realistic modernn perspective like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, tactics and logistics make it impossible to simply have one huge battle royale.  Or perhaps you would prefer a WWII example where different operational zones resulted in risking a weakness in your front lines from deploying too many troops into one battle zone.

I believe a good game should tell a story, and simulate the action from participating in the story.

[NGTM-1R]

if two warring factions came into conflict, im sure they would pour as many resources on as they could to win the battle
this would result in a large number of capships and pilots
so the game should simulate the feelings of being one pilot among many in a huge chaotic battle

So you've learned to armchair general from the academy of the RTS rather than studying logistics and tactics from a more traditional military school of thought? 

From a more realistic modernn perspective like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, tactics and logistics make it impossible to simply have one huge battle royale.  Or perhaps you would prefer a WWII example where different operational zones resulted in risking a weakness in your front lines from deploying too many troops into one battle zone.

I believe a good game should tell a story, and simulate the action from participating in the story.

Nothing he says violates those. Logistics is easier with a single force then several scattered about. All tactical thought is based on achieving concentration of force.

I suppose, if you counted out capships and support personnel, you could call FS warfare at the squad level. But aside from the gross oversimplification, and the stupidity, of that, that's very clearly not the kind of warfare FS wants to portray.

Just to make the tactical comparison bankrupt in full, FS' tactical considerations are different completely. The subspace drive rewrote them. So did the Shivans' total lack of logistical targets. A naval analogy would certainly have been more apt, if not perfect.

[Jake2447]

if two warring factions came into conflict, im sure they would pour as many resources on as they could to win the battle
this would result in a large number of capships and pilots
so the game should simulate the feelings of being one pilot among many in a huge chaotic battle

So you've learned to armchair general from the academy of the RTS rather than studying logistics and tactics from a more traditional military school of thought? 

From a more realistic modernn perspective like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, tactics and logistics make it impossible to simply have one huge battle royale.  Or perhaps you would prefer a WWII example where different operational zones resulted in risking a weakness in your front lines from deploying too many troops into one battle zone.

I believe a good game should tell a story, and simulate the action from participating in the story.

if you don't believe large scale battles are cannon to FS2, then take another look at the FS2 intro

besides, comparisons to iraq and afghanistan are completely irrelevant
the reason we lack large scale battles in these conflicts is because of something called guerilla warfare
the enemy knows we are smaller force, an chooses not to engage us directly
obviously, this is not the approach of canon factions in FS2, aside from convoy raiding
in FS2, factions engage each other directly, risking ships each with an occupancy higher than the total US deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan
if they are risking these ships, do you really think they are not going to wage huge amounts of fighters to protect these destroyers
the only reason it wasnt like this in-game is because then game would crash
again watch the FS2 intro

not to mention, you must have a very biased view of RTS, as flanking actions, and strategic use of each units abilities as well as effective logistical management are the key to any moderately recent game in that genre

[Zarathud]

if you don't believe large scale battles are cannon to FS2, then take another look at the FS2 intro

Which portrays the SD Lucifer and a SD Demon destroying a GTD Orion in combat, with one Vasudan capital ship in the background?  Not very BIG at all.  The only large fleet is at the end with a GVD Hatshepsut, GVCv Sobek and 2 GVC Mentus escorting the GTVA Colossus past the Orion's wreckage?  That's the main fleet in FS2.

the reason we lack large scale battles in these conflicts is because of something called guerilla warfare
the enemy knows we are smaller force, an chooses not to engage us directly
obviously, this is not the approach of canon factions in FS2, aside from convoy raiding

Not obvious.  The factions engage each other directly in FS2, but not with all of their fleet capacity.  The use of fighters/bombers is significant, but the heavy weight capital ships are used sparingly (except for the illusion of the immense Shivan fleet, but it's only a model, er, ...bitmap).

the only reason it wasnt like this in-game is because then game would crash

You're wrong.  The engine's capabilities in FS2 were limited more than required by the technology of the day.  Scalability was built-in, and the design decision was made to wanted to keep the same feel as FreeSpace (but with bigger stuff) and to make missions easier to design and fully playtest -- rather than just tossing in ships for that super chaotic battle.

again watch the FS2 intro

Why?  It doesn't prove your point, plus I have the benefit of visiting the Volition offices before the release of FreeSpace 2 (where I had to sign a NDA after seeing the beam weapons/nebula effects, unfortunately).  Plus, I wrote the article condemning Battle of Endor missions after discussing their problems with various designers...including those at Volition.

not to mention, you must have a very biased view of RTS, as flanking actions, and strategic use of each units abilities as well as effective logistical management are the key to any moderately recent game in that genre

Puppies are bull****.  Once you've ever tried simulating a wargame set in Napoleonics or Civil War, you'd recognize how little real and simplified strategy exists in a RTS.  RTS may be fun, but don't deceive yourself that they're anything other than light on strategy.

[Jake2447]

if you don't believe large scale battles are cannon to FS2, then take another look at the FS2 intro

Which portrays the SD Lucifer and a SD Demon destroying a GTD Orion in combat, with one Vasudan capital ship in the background?  Not very BIG at all.  The only large fleet is at the end with a GVD Hatshepsut, GVCv Sobek and 2 GVC Mentus escorting the GTVA Colossus past the Orion's wreckage?  That's the main fleet in FS2.

the reason we lack large scale battles in these conflicts is because of something called guerilla warfare
the enemy knows we are smaller force, an chooses not to engage us directly
obviously, this is not the approach of canon factions in FS2, aside from convoy raiding

Not obvious.  The factions engage each other directly in FS2, but not with all of their fleet capacity.  The use of fighters/bombers is significant, but the heavy weight capital ships are used sparingly (except for the illusion of the immense Shivan fleet, but it's only a model, er, ...bitmap).

the only reason it wasnt like this in-game is because then game would crash

You're wrong.  The engine's capabilities in FS2 were limited more than required by the technology of the day.  Scalability was built-in, and the design decision was made to wanted to keep the same feel as FreeSpace (but with bigger stuff) and to make missions easier to design and fully playtest -- rather than just tossing in ships for that super chaotic battle.

again watch the FS2 intro

Why?  It doesn't prove your point, plus I have the benefit of visiting the Volition offices before the release of FreeSpace 2 (where I had to sign a NDA after seeing the beam weapons/nebula effects, unfortunately).  Plus, I wrote the article condemning Battle of Endor missions after discussing their problems with various designers...including those at Volition.

not to mention, you must have a very biased view of RTS, as flanking actions, and strategic use of each units abilities as well as effective logistical management are the key to any moderately recent game in that genre

Puppies are bull****.  Once you've ever tried simulating a wargame set in Napoleonics or Civil War, you'd recognize how little real and simplified strategy exists in a RTS.  RTS may be fun, but don't deceive yourself that they're anything other than light on strategy.

the FS2 intro portrays 4 destroyers and I believe 10 cruisers, as well as quite a few fighters/bombers
by FS2 standards, that qualifies as a large battle

I think you missed my response to your analogy
engagements in FS2 frequently involve cruisers and/or larger ships, which would contain a crew similar in numbers to that of a battalion (cruiser) or a brigade (corvette)
that's far larger than the largest engagements in Iraq/Afghanistan

i'll agree that technology and the restraints of design came into play

So your opinion is automatically better than mine because you wrote an article about it?

I'm not saying that RTS is the epitome of strategy simulation, but it does effectively capture the canon strategy of another video game, FS2

[Zarathud]

Nothing he says violates those. Logistics is easier with a single force then several scattered about. All tactical thought is based on achieving concentration of force.

That's incorrect.  All tactical thought is about the appropriate use of units to use their full potentialities and achieve victory.  You can lose by using too many units, as well as too few.  Compare Rumsfeld's view of the US military in the 2003 Iraq War (albeit poorly implemented), with than Powell's view of the US military in 1990 Iraq War.  Or to avoid getting off-tanget, let's just use this definition[url=http://:

The United States Army Field Manual 3-0 offers the following definition of tactics: "Tactics – (Department Of Defense) 1. The employment of units in combat. 2. The ordered arrangement and maneuver of units in relation to each other and/or to the enemy in order to use their full potentialities. (Army) The employment of units in combat. It includes the ordered arrangement and maneuver of units in relation to each other, the terrain, and the enemy in order to translate potential combat power into victorious battles and engagements. (FM 3-0)."

Achieving potential combat power does not equal throwing everything you have at a battle.

I suppose, if you counted out capships and support personnel, you could call FS warfare at the squad level. But aside from the gross oversimplification, and the stupidity, of that, that's very clearly not the kind of warfare FS wants to portray.

FreeSpace portrays limited battlefield engagements.  Only a few ships engage at a time in a mission, rather than having a continuing rolling theatre of war.  It's inherently mission based, rather than a continuing battlezone.  Several smaller missions can portrary a BIG mission more effectively than one battle royale.

Just to make the tactical comparison bankrupt in full, FS' tactical considerations are different completely. The subspace drive rewrote them. So did the Shivans' total lack of logistical targets.

Alternatively, you could argue that the Shivan logistical target was the core supply depots and capitals of their enemies -- the systems of Vasuda and Sol.  

Regardless of whether specific tactics were invalidated by subspace, subspace]:

The United States Army Field Manual 3-0 offers the following definition of tactics: "Tactics – (Department Of Defense) 1. The employment of units in combat. 2. The ordered arrangement and maneuver of units in relation to each other and/or to the enemy in order to use their full potentialities. (Army) The employment of units in combat. It includes the ordered arrangement and maneuver of units in relation to each other, the terrain, and the enemy in order to translate potential combat power into victorious battles and engagements. (FM 3-0)."

Achieving potential combat power does not equal throwing everything you have at a battle.

I suppose, if you counted out capships and support personnel, you could call FS warfare at the squad level. But aside from the gross oversimplification, and the stupidity, of that, that's very clearly not the kind of warfare FS wants to portray.

FreeSpace portrays limited battlefield engagements.  Only a few ships engage at a time in a mission, rather than having a continuing rolling theatre of war.  It's inherently mission based, rather than a continuing battlezone.  Several smaller missions can portrary a BIG mission more effectively than one battle royale.

Just to make the tactical comparison bankrupt in full, FS' tactical considerations are different completely. The subspace drive rewrote them. So did the Shivans' total lack of logistical targets.

Alternatively, you could argue that the Shivan logistical target was the core supply depots and capitals of their enemies -- the systems of Vasuda and Sol.  

Regardless of whether specific tactics were invalidated by subspace, subspace creates as many dangers as opportunities.  If you attempted to engage a fleet with everything you had, that risked the enemy fleet warping through subspace elsewhere that would then be completely unprotected.  In my mind, those factors mitigate against fully deploying your entire fleet in one massive battle -- because the enemy might leave and strike somewhere else while you mass forces.  While the nodes create choke points between each system, subspace travel makes the logistics of getting everyone to the same gate difficult since each fleet (and their supplies) also must travel through the node network.

[Jake2447]

regardless of what you say, the fact is, every time a destroyer is deployed, 10,000 lives are at stake
sooner or later a destroyer will engage another destroyer, in which case the pilots of the 120 fighters on board will most likely be deployed to destroy the enemy warship
im not saying all, but many would be
in fact, the more I argue this, the less I support big engagements in FS2, because i see how incapable the engine is of simulating the feeling of such a large battle

[Zarathud]

the FS2 intro portrays 4 destroyers and I believe 10 cruisers, as well as quite a few fighters/bombers

Count the capital ships again.  At most, there's 10 capital ships on both sides at 1:10 which has the widest angle on the battle.  And it appears there's effectively 2 combat zones (fore/background).  That battle is entirely separate from the reconstructed GTVA fleet.  While there were many fighters/bombers, nobody disputes that fleets in FreeSpace 1 and 2 goes through wings like a sick man uses tissue paper.

engagements in FS2 frequently involve cruisers and/or larger ships, which would contain a crew similar in numbers to that of a battalion (cruiser) or a brigade (corvette)
that's far larger than the largest engagements in Iraq/Afghanistan

The horror in FreeSpace comes from the fact that the loss of one capital ship meant so many dead, and wings were lost in huge numbers.  Counting dead sentients is much different than counting destroyed capital ships.  A BIG Battle of Endor mission focuses on the ships involved, not the sentients on those ships.

So your opinion is automatically better than mine because you wrote an article about it?

When your opinion is about the fact of what Volition did or didn't do, I'm not only more informed but more correct. Your opinion can be that the sky is the color green, but then you'd be wrong.  

I'm not saying that RTS is the epitome of strategy simulation, but it does effectively capture the canon strategy of another video game, FS2

How?

in fact, the more I argue this, the less I support big engagements in FS2, because i see how incapable the engine is of simulating the feeling of such a large battle

Mission accomplished.    I think a limited engagement with a compelling debriefing and follow up mission can create the right feeling and tone more effectively than one big battle, where the scale of what is happening easily gets lost in the fast-paced action.

[General Battuta]

Given a good computer, Freespace 2's engine is fully capable of rendering an effective BoE. We're just disputing whether it's fun to play.

Zarathud, have you played Blue Planet? Many of the missions in it might seem BoE-ish, with dozens of fighter and bomber wings swarming around a convoy of ten (or more?) capital ships. But they're designed such that the player can easily recognize where he/she needs to be, reach that location in the right time, make a difference, and move on to a new fulcrum. In fact, it's not even that the player is assigned a specific task such as 'destroy beam cannons' -- it's that you have command of most of the wings in the battle, and you're given all the information you need to deploy them properly. Your own flying is the keystone to victory, not the only critical element but certainly not irrelevant.

I hope that's the kind of design you'd applaud, rather than condemn.

[Droid803]

BoE missions, when done right, can give that "holy ****" feeling, to show the immense scope of a conflict.
I believe one of the creeds of FRED is to "Show, not Tell". Noone wants to just read " Our battlegroup was attacked by three Ravanas, but we managed to beat them back, although now we're low on supplies. Escort this wimpy convoy, because epic battles are too good for you to even watch."

If I saw that, I would be like..."damn it, I didn't even get to watch that!" and immediately quit the campaign. I didn't finish INFR1 because I didn't get to watch the Apothesses take down the Sathanas. Nemesis was fun though. Because it was BoE. It had excellent replay value. I don't remember how many times I played through the BoE section and didn't get bored. I kept getting hit by the Nemesis's beams so I actually had to replay it, but uhh...that's not the point.

What did and did not do makes no difference. That was then, with the technology then. There was a limitation of power from computers. That isn't the issue now. if you're computer can't take a BoE, too bad for you, we're not making money so we don't care. Besides, some of 's missions were **** because they weren't BoE. Notably, the last mission of Silent Threat. You have to take down a superdestroyer. By yourself (ok, you get a single cruiser, WHEE!). It took forever. Now, throw in an Orion or two on either side, and a 5-6 more allied wings to help you out. Not only will it not take as long, you'd actually have something to do (disarm the Hades's SSLs) which definietly will effect the outcome of the battle, you'd have something better to do then to sit in a blind spot and hit 64x time compression after taking out 200 lokis. The battle would seem a lot more climatic as well.

But, I do think we're beating a dead horse. I doubt any of us are going to change their views.

[NGTM-1R]

That's incorrect.  All tactical thought is about the appropriate use of units to use their full potentialities and achieve victory.  You can lose by using too many units, as well as too few.

Not tactically. Perhaps on a strategic level. Leaving that aside, however, in the end all tactics devolve into methods for creating a superiority of force. Only the method differs. Some are positive (literal concentration), some are negative (like decoying the enemy out of posistion), some involve posistioning (flanking), some involve simply doing things in such a way that your opponent cannot bring his force to bear (manuver warfare), but the end purpose of all of them is to be able to bring more weapons to bear at the critical point then the other guy. Clauswitz describes war "as an act of force"; he is quite correct. Applying the force intelligently is still applying the force.

FreeSpace portrays limited battlefield engagements.  Only a few ships engage at a time in a mission, rather than having a continuing rolling theatre of war.  It's inherently mission based, rather than a continuing battlezone.  Several smaller missions can portrary a BIG mission more effectively than one battle royale.

Explain how, then. This is something you've quite consistantly failed to actually do. And FS engagements are not limited, they are miniscule.

Alternatively, you could argue that the Shivan logistical target was the core supply depots and capitals of their enemies -- the systems of Vasuda and Sol.

You misunderstand me.

Leaving aside the fogged definition attempt, as frankly there's nothing of use to either of us there and it merely constitutes a case of argumentum ad vericundum or perhaps just trying to confuse with large words (don't bother, I've read quite a bit more on such subjects then I suspect you have), there is no commander in the world who will not be happy given more forces to accomplish his objective. How well he uses them is a different subject entirely, this is true, but they make it easier, simpler, to accomplish. What I said closing my first paragraph still holds true.

Regardless of whether specific tactics were invalidated by subspace, subspace creates as many dangers as opportunities.  If you attempted to engage a fleet with everything you had, that risked the enemy fleet warping through subspace elsewhere that would then be completely unprotected.  In my mind, those factors mitigate against fully deploying your entire fleet in one massive battle -- because the enemy might leave and strike somewhere else while you mass forces.  While the nodes create choke points between each system, subspace travel makes the logistics of getting everyone to the same gate difficult since each fleet (and their supplies) also must travel through the node network.

And Fredrick the Great said that "he who defends everything, defends nothing." If you spread out as you say, what is there to keep your enemy from picking you off piecemeal with their own concentrated force? The great power of the subspace drive is that it allows forces to be pulled together or spread apart nearly instantly; intersystem jumps are, after all, nearly instantenous. And as I have observed before to others, just how many targets are there for them to attack? A few installations perhaps. Inhabited worlds (although this is questionable for FS1 prior to the Lucifer, and even then, the Shivans seem to care little about them). Nodes into and out of the system. There really aren't that many things worth defending, and if you looked, the majority of them in any given situation are probably your own warships! (Which makes spreading them thin even more incomprehensible.) The subspace drive revoked the concept of battle lines just as it revoked the stranglehold of the carrier by taking away its ability to keep its opponents at arm's length. Space is furthermore vast, and it is safe to assume that the majority of engagements fought in either FreeSpace are bushwhacks to some extent or another, wherein one side, probably the defenders, had their ships dispersed into interplanetary space and running quiet to protect them. Otherwise, there's really no reason for them to be fought where they are.

I'm not quite sure what point you're trying to make with the choke points. We all played King's Gambit, so it's of course true (although King's Gambit makes it sound like there were other entry points to Gamma Drac, oddly enough). By the same token, however, we also know just how quickly ships can move through nodes. Never once have they posed a logistical problem by their mere existence; this is facetious and absolutely not borne out by anything mentioned in any game. The problems come when you can't protect your traffic through them.

And speaking of argumentum ad vericundum, you're at it again with the repeated linking of the subspace article (which I helped write), to no good purpose. I'm sure it helps your argument look more authorative, but what it really does, I don't know.

[Jake2447]

the FS2 intro portrays 4 destroyers and I believe 10 cruisers, as well as quite a few fighters/bombers

Count the capital ships again.  At most, there's 10 capital ships on both sides at 1:10 which has the widest angle on the battle.  And it appears there's effectively 2 combat zones (fore/background).  That battle is entirely separate from the reconstructed GTVA fleet.  While there were many fighters/bombers, nobody disputes that fleets in FreeSpace 1 and 2 goes through wings like a sick man uses tissue paper.

engagements in FS2 frequently involve cruisers and/or larger ships, which would contain a crew similar in numbers to that of a battalion (cruiser) or a brigade (corvette)
that's far larger than the largest engagements in Iraq/Afghanistan

The horror in FreeSpace comes from the fact that the loss of one capital ship meant so many dead, and wings were lost in huge numbers.  Counting dead sentients is much different than counting destroyed capital ships.  A BIG Battle of Endor mission focuses on the ships involved, not the sentients on those ships.

So your opinion is automatically better than mine because you wrote an article about it?

When your opinion is about the fact of what Volition did or didn't do, I'm not only more informed but more correct. Your opinion can be that the sky is the color green, but then you'd be wrong.  

I'm not saying that RTS is the epitome of strategy simulation, but it does effectively capture the canon strategy of another video game, FS2

How?

in fact, the more I argue this, the less I support big engagements in FS2, because i see how incapable the engine is of simulating the feeling of such a large battle

Mission accomplished.    I think a limited engagement with a compelling debriefing and follow up mission can create the right feeling and tone more effectively than one big battle, where the scale of what is happening easily gets lost in the fast-paced action.

Im going to quit this because you obviously do not care what i say, and are just regurgitating your artilce that you believe makes you a BOE god.