CSE wrote: ↑Sat Oct 21, 2017 3:53 am
But as usual in life, there are compromises:
The major one is depth of
complexity vs. learning curve/fun factor for casual players.
This is important: this is a commercial product, so it should not please only few hardcore gamers; the market would be too small. With beautiful graphics and a rich atmosphere, this game has everything to please a crowd of people that may want to boot the game just for a few hours when they have time - these players should not have complex interfaces and option coming into the way of flying and dogfighting-
well, im already saying to shove all equipment into easily autogenerated groups (weapons-> size -> type, shields, sensors, drives, other systems -> type (factory, refinery, wormhole device, warp rail) ) and have that be the base groupings based on which discussions can be had and the base gameplay without any additional mental burden can be based on.
for a fighter it would coincide with the desired groupings anyway and for larger ships its a base from which a player can adapt and change it to eir needs.
CSE wrote: ↑Sat Oct 21, 2017 3:53 am
Obviously, one can set "defaults" everywhere and allow options to hide the complexity, but then we come to the next compromise:
Depth of one feature vs. number of features/diversity/richness given in a defined development effort (man-hours). As an example: if the developper spend time to allow for arbitrary hierarchies of power distribution including a well thought GUI, he has no time to spend on a more interesting procedural generation or a better AI.
well, we already need some interface and code to handle power management between elements, if done in a robust way it could be trivially nested to produce arbitrary groupings.
if done really robust it can even be reused for totally different purposes as well, like generalised resource allocations (ships, money, materials)
same for the interface to handle it
CSE wrote: ↑Sat Oct 21, 2017 3:53 am
So in this particular case: what compromise adds good game elements without being too costly or too complex? In my
personal opinion spaceships in the future should have smart onboard computers, so for casual players, the system should automatically switch between combat and non-combat configurations (e.g. when activating targeting computer, or when activating shields or whatever). For more advanced player, adding hot-key driven option to channel more energy to shield, or point defence, or cannons or engines (some few well thought categories) add gameplay without being too difficult to implement.
And then switch to other features - AI and procedural generation of asset cannot have too much effort put into them, they are "make or break" elements.
well, considering that the cruise drive (which is a pretty fundamental movement mode) is just a power setting to thrusters.
So some basic manual power settings more or less
need to be in to preserve that.
(also, completely ignoring that josh already seems to have made his mind up on how the basic power mechanics look. as documented in the early videos and the prototype)
BFett wrote: ↑Sat Oct 21, 2017 10:10 am
In my opinion, not having all weapons online at the same time adds unnecessary complexity to combat which isn't needed. Just make 2 weapon groups, fire the fore turrets in group one and the aft turrets in group two and you are set. Why do you feel the need to turn on and off your turrets?
why should i keep my anti fighter guns running when theres nothing in that size class around?
just stuff that extra power into the equipment that i actually need.
BFett wrote: ↑Sat Oct 21, 2017 10:10 am
It's just for simplicity and making LT a game which is user friendly. It seems redundant to the weapon grouping system and would seem to force the player to micro manage each individual turret.
why force?
did the repeated notion of nested grouping pass your attention? :V
plop the stuff into power groups (with some automated base setup) and control those.
but the point is that any predefined or automated system cant possibly catch all the things i want to do.
i may want to set up a couple of different weapon banks to power up and down as needed or to spread my fire (if we combine that with control groups, and i think we should for simplicity)
also: what weapon grouping system?
i havent yet seen one shown in LT, it could very well just merge with it.
weapon bank [0:n] control group is the same as weapon bank [0:n] power group.
BFett wrote: ↑Sat Oct 21, 2017 10:10 am
Directional active defense is fine, hence weapon groups. The issue I have is with powering half the weapons off and expecting additional energy from them. I feel that all systems should be either on or off not half on or half off. If a weapon group that wasn't firing didn't draw energy (no matter it's online offline state) would that satisfy you?
because thats not how the power management josh showed us works
and why shouldnt i be able to push more power into a gun (up to a limit) and have it fire faster?
or the inverse, reduce the power to my gun and have it fire slower but allow me to keep all my stuff firing.
with just binary on/off you just have to hope that the gun you want to fire has energy when you need to fire it.
with dedicated allocations its guaranteed to fire at a certain rate of fire.
and its not additional energy, its less drain on the main system which has limited resources.
BFett wrote: ↑Sat Oct 21, 2017 10:10 am
I'm not talking about Anit-missile systems. Those should be automated by the ship's on-board computer and should activate as necessary. The player doesn't need to control this system. They just need to make sure it's powered.
wheres the difference between a gun and an anti missile system?
have a few fighters ward off missiles with their main guns like in most games that feature the player piloting fighters and capital ships to be protected (like freespace, starlancer, freelancer and wing commander (not sure on WC, but i assume the option exists because its cool and a good way to interact with friendly capitals) )
BFett wrote: ↑Sat Oct 21, 2017 10:10 am
Groups make way more sense to me than powering down turrets on an individual basis.
how to define those groups other than shifting them around manually?